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Sociopedia © 2010 The Author(s) © 2010 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of Sociopedia ) SN Eisenstadt, 2010, ‘Modernity and modernization’, Sociopedia , DOI: 10/
Theories of modernization and the
framework of multiple modernities
The major approach to the study of modernity and modernization presented here goes against some of the explicit and implicit assumptions of the classical sociological tradition and above all of the theories of modernization predominant in the 1950s and 1960s as well as against some of the themes dominant in contemporary discourse. The ‘classical’ theories of modernization from the 1950s identified the core characteristics of modern society as the decomposition of older ‘closed’ institu- tional frameworks and the development of new struc- tural, institutional and cultural features and formations, and the growing potential for social mobilization (Deutsch, 1961). The most important structural dimension of modernity was seen in the tendency to structural differentiation – manifest among others in growing urbanization; commodifica- tion of the economy; the development of distinctive channels of communication and agencies of educa- tion. On the institutional level such decomposition gave rise to the development of new institutional for- mations, such as the modern state, modern national collectivities, new market, especially capitalist,
economies, which were defined as autonomous, and which were regulated by specific mechanisms of the market; of bureaucratic organizations and the like. In later formulations the development of such autonomous spheres, each regulated by its own logic was often defined as the essence of modern institu- tional formations. Concomitantly modernity was seen as bearing a distinct cultural program, and shaping a distinct type of personality. These theories, like the classical sociological analy- ses of Marx, Durkheim and at least one reading of Weber (Durkheim, 1973; Kamenka, 1983; cf. Weber, 1978, 1968a, 1968b) implicitly or explicitly conflated major dimensions of modernity as they saw it devel- oping in the West. In these approaches, analytically distinct dimensions combine and become historically inseparable. An often implicit assumption of modern- ization studies was that cultural dimensions of mod- ernization, the ‘secular’ rational worldview including an individualistic orientation, are necessarily inter- woven with the structural ones. Most of the classics of sociology as well as studies of modernization of the 1940s and 1950s and the closely related studies of
Modernity and
modernization
SN Eisenstadt The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel
abstract This article analyzes the major characteristics of modernity, of modern civilization; the major analytical approaches related to the major social structures and the contemporary state. The core of this analysis is the notion of multiple modernities. This idea assumes that the best way to understand the con- temporary world is for modernity to be seen as a story of continual formation, constitution, reconstitu- tion and development of multiple, changing and often contested and conflicting modernities. keywords antinomies and tensions ◆democracies ◆globalization ◆modernity ◆modernization ◆ national and revolutionary states ◆traditional societies
convergence of industrial societies have assumed that the basic institutional formations that developed in European modernity, and the cultural program of modernity as it developed in the West with its hege- monic and homogenizing tendencies, will ‘naturally’ be taken over, with possible local variations, in all – or at least in the ‘successful’ – modernizing societies, and that this project of modernity will continue in the West, and will ultimately prevail throughout the world. But the reality that emerged proved to be radical- ly different. Developments in the contemporary era did not bear out the assumption of ‘convergence’ of modern societies. They actually indicated that the various modern autonomous institutional arenas – the economic, the political, the educational or the family are defined and regulated and combine in dif- ferent ways in different societies and in different periods of their development. The great diversity of modern societies, even of societies relatively similar in their economic development, like the major industrial capitalist societies in Europe, the USA and Japan, became more apparent. Far-reaching variabil- ity developed even within the West , within Europe itself, and above all between Europe and the Americas – the USA (Sombart, 1976), Latin America, or rather the Latin Americas. This was even more evident with respect to the cultural and structural dimensions of modernity. While the different dimensions of the original Western project constituted crucial reference points for tracing the processes of continual expansion of modernity, the developments in these societies have gone far beyond the original cultural program of modernity; and far beyond many of the initial prem- ises of this project, as well as beyond the institution- al patterns that developed in Europe. Contrary to the claims of many scholars from the 1970s on that the best way to understand the dynamics of different ‘modernizing’ societies is to see them as continuations of their traditional institu- tional patterns and dynamics, the institutional for- mations which developed in most societies of the world have been distinctively modern, even if their dynamics were influenced by distinctive cultural premises, traditions and historical experiences. Of special importance in this context was the fact that the most important social and political movements which became predominant in these societies were basically modern, promulgating distinctive ways of interpreting modernity. This was true not only of the various reformist, socialist and nationalist move- ments which came into being in all these societies from about the middle of the 19th century up to and after the Second World War, but also of contempo- rary fundamentalist movements.
From the outset, in attempts in modern societies to understand the nature of this new era or civiliza- tion, there developed two opposing evaluations, attesting indeed to the inherent contradictions of modernity. One such evaluation, implicit in theories of modernization and of the ‘convergence of indus- trial societies’ of the 1950s and the 1960s, saw modernity as a progressive force which promises a better, inclusive, emancipating world. The other such evaluation, which developed first within European societies and later resonated in non- Western European societies, espoused a highly ambivalent approach to modernity – seeing technol- ogy, or the empowerment of egoistic and hedonistic attitudes and goals as a morally destructive force. The classics of sociology, de Tocqueville, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, were already highly conscious that modernity was full of such contradictory – con- structive and destructive – forces. Such ambivalence intensified in the 1920s and 1930s with the rise of fascism and communism, the confrontation with which constituted one of the major concerns of European sociology in that period, above all in the Frankfurt School of the so-called ‘critical’ sociology. Paradoxically, after the Second World War, a new optimistic view of modernity with but weak empha- sis on its contradictions prevailed, both in the ‘liber- al’ pluralistic, and the Marxist, especially the communist versions. But such an optimistic view of modernity gave way to a more pessimistic one with the intellectual rebellion and protest of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the waning of the Cold War and with the rise of ‘postmodernism’. The criti- cal themes and the ambivalent attitude to modernity re-emerged, emphasizing again the menacing aspects of the development of technology and science such as the nuclear threat and the destruction of the envi- ronment (Eisenstadt, 1973). Awareness of the destructive potential of moder- nity was reinforced by the recognition that the con- tinual expansion of modernity throughout the world was not necessarily benign or peaceful; that it did not assure the continual progress of reason. The fact that these processes were continuously interwoven with wars, with imperialistic political constitutional and economic expansion, with violence, genocides, repression and the dislocation of large populations – indeed sometimes of entire societies – was recog- nized. In the optimistic view of modernity, such phe- nomena were often portrayed as ‘survivals’ of pre-modern attitudes. Increasingly, however, it was recognized that the ‘old’ destructive forces were rad- ically transformed and intensified by being inter - woven with the ideological premises of modernity, with its expansion, and with the specific patterns in the institutionalization of modern regimes. This
central components of the modern project, empha- sized in early studies of modernization by Lerner (1958) and later by Inkeles and Smith (1974). First is recognition of the possibility of undertaking a great variety of roles beyond any fixed ascriptive roles, and the receptivity to messages of such open possibilities. Second is recognition of the possibility of belonging to trans-local, changing communities. These contestations were most fully played out in the political arena, and the ways in which they were played out were shaped first by the tendency to restructure center–periphery relations as the focus of political dynamics in modern societies; second, by the openness of political contestation; third, by the tendency toward politicization of the demands of various sectors of society and of conflicts between them; and fourth, by the struggle about the defini- tion of the realm of the political, and of the distinc- tion between public and private spheres, all of them entailing the loss of markers of certainty. The other side of this ontological doubt, the loss of the markers of certainty, was the quest to over- come it. This quest was closely connected with the other components of the cultural program of moder- nity, namely those of the naturalization of the cos- mos, of nature and of humankind, and of human emancipation and autonomy (Blumberg, 1987). The autonomy of man – his or hers – but in the first for- mulation of this program certainly ‘his’ – comprised several components: (1) reflexivity and exploration; (2) active construction of nature and its modernity, possibly including human nature, and of society. The naturalization of humankind and the cosmos as it initially developed in Europe entailed several con- flicting premises: first, the change of the place of God in the constitution of the cosmos and of humankind; second the autonomy and potential supremacy of reason in the exploration and even in the shaping of the world. Humanity and nature were increasingly perceived not as directly regulated by the will of God, as in the monotheistic civilizations, or by some higher, transcendental metaphysical prin- ciples, as in Hinduism and Confucianism, or by the universal logos, as in the Greek tradition. Rather they were conceived as autonomous entities regulat- ed by internal laws that could be fully explored and grasped by human reason, through human rational inquiry. Thus the rational exploration of ‘natural’ laws became a major focus of the new cultural pro- gram. It was assumed that exploration of these laws would lead to the unraveling of the mysteries of the universe and of human destiny, and thus that reason would become the guiding force in the interpreta- tion of the world and in shaping human destiny. For many, scientific exploration became the epitome of rationalism.
Yet in this program there also developed a contra- dictory tendency – namely a belief in the possibility of bridging the gap between the transcendental and the mundane orders, of realizing in the mundane order some utopian, eschatological visions. Such exploration was not purely passive or contemplative. This modern cultural vision also assumed that such exploration would achieve not only the understand- ing, but even the mastery of the universe and of human destiny. The ‘rational’ exploration of nature and the search for potential mastery over it extended beyond the technical and scientific spheres to that of the social, giving rise to the assumption that the applica- tion of knowledge acquired in such inquiries was rel- evant to the management of the affairs of society and to the construction of the socio-political order. Two complementary but also potentially contra- dictory tendencies about the best ways in which such construction could take place developed within this program. One was a ‘totalizing’ tendency that gave rise to the belief in the possibility of realizing utopi- an eschatological visions through conscious human actions in the mundane orders of social life and/or technocratic planning and activities. The totalizing version of this tendency assumed that those who mastered the secrets of nature and of human nature could devise appropriate institutional arrangements for the implementation of the good society. The sec- ond major tendency was rooted in a growing recog- nition of the legitimacy of multiple individual and group goals and interests and of multiple interpreta- tions of the common good. The loss of markers of certainty and the contesta- tions about major dimensions of the social order were exacerbated in the discourse of modernity by the fact that the opening up of numerous institu- tional and cultural possibilities was connected with the dissolution of hitherto existing social bonds, giv- ing rise to the feeling of uprootedness. ‘Modernity paints us all into a morass of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambi- guity and anguish, a universe in which “all that is solid melts into air” ’ (Berman, 1988). The continu- ous prevalence of these tensions and the continuous change inherent in modernity has added another crucial dimension to the repertoire of themes in the self-understanding of modern society, namely the perennial awareness of ambivalence inherent to the very program of modernity. This ambivalence is manifest in the fact that all programs of modernity entailed a ‘double’ orientation (Miller, 1997): an affirmation of existing hegemonic arrangements and an attempt to find spaces in which a private or com- munal orientation can be instituted – indeed of stimulating alternative modernities. Modernity was
perceived to be on ‘endless trial’ (Kolakowski, 1990). The combination of these components of the new ontological vision led to what Wittrock (2002) and others have designated as the great promissory themes of modernity – the view of modernity as bearing within itself the continual progress of knowl- edge and of its rational application; of human eman- cipation, of continual inclusion of sectors of society within its frameworks and of the expansion of such emancipatory forces to entire humanity. But it was also this combination that bore within itself the seeds of the possibility of the great disappointments and traumas attendant on the attempts to realize these promises with modernity beset by internal antinomies and contradictions, continual critical dis- course and political contestations.
The promissory notes of modernity
and the antinomies and tensions in
the cultural and political programs of
modernity
The basic antinomies of modernity constituted a radical transformation of those inherent in the Axial civilizations. Those focused first on the awareness of a great range of possibilities of transcendental visions and of the range of ways of their possible implemen- tation; second, they focused on the tension between reason and revelation or faith; and third, on the problematic of the desirability of attempts at the full institutionalization of these visions in their pristine form (Arnason et al., 2005; Tiryakian, 1996). The transformation of these antinomies in the cultural program of modernity focused first on the evaluation of major dimensions of human experi- ence, and especially on the place of reason in the construction of nature, of human society and human history; second, on the concomitant problem of the bases of morality and autonomy; third, on the ten- sion between reflexivity and the active construction of nature and society; fourth, on that between total- izing and pluralistic approaches to human life and the constitution of society; and fifth, on that between control and autonomy, or discipline and freedom. The first major tension that developed within the cultural program of modernity was that with respect to the primacy of different dimensions of human existence, especially the tension between the predom- inance of reason as against the emotional and aes- thetic dimensions. Closely related were tensions between different conceptions of the bases of human morality, especially whether such morality could be based on or grounded in universal principles of rea- son, in instrumental rationality or in multiple
rationalities; and/or in multiple concrete experiences and traditions of different human communities. The second tension that developed within the cultural program of modernity was that between dif- ferent conceptions of human autonomy and its rela- tion to the constitution of humankind, society and nature, especially between reflexivity and critical exploration on the one hand, and on the other on the mastery, even the constitution of nature and soci- ety. Closely related is the tension between the empha- sis on human autonomy and the extensive restric- tions (Elias, 1983; Foucault, 1965, 1973, 1975, 1988) rooted in the institutionalization of this pro- gram, especially its technocratic and/or moral vision- ary totalizing conceptions, i. between freedom and control (Wagner, 1994). Perhaps the most critical tension, in ideological and political terms alike, has been that between the pluralistic view which accepts the existence of differ- ent values and rationalities as against the view which conflates such different values and above all different rationalities in a totalistic way. This tension has probably been the most critical from the point of view of the development of the different cultural and institutional patterns of modernity, and of its destructive potentialities. Additional tensions emphasized strongly by Weber were those focusing on the contradiction between the basic premises and antinomies of the cultural and political programs of modernity and the institutional developments of modern societies (cf. Mitzman, 1969); the vicissitudes of the institutional order of this program. Their central focus was the exclusivist tendencies rooted both in the ontological premises of this program as well as its institutional- ization. These entailed the continual dislocation and exclusion of various social sectors and collectivities from active participation in this order with claims to a universal emancipatory vision for the entire human race. Of special importance among these contradic- tions have been those between creative dimensions inherent in the visions which led to the crystalliza- tion of modernity (the visions promulgated in the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and the Revolutions) and the flattening of these visions, the ‘disenchantment’ of the world inherent in their rou- tinization, in the growing bureaucratization of the modern world. These contradictions were intensified by the ten- sion between the tendency to self-definition and constitution of autonomous political units, states and nation-states and the often intertwined develop- ment of local and transnational groups, networks and social spaces beyond their control. It was around these tensions that there developed
differences among themselves, i. a great variety of multiple modernities, epitomizing different interpre- tations of the cultural and political program of modernity (Eisenstadt, 2002). Differences between the different cultural programs of modernity were closely related to the vicissitudes of their institutionalization. Thus, in the political realm, they were closely related to the ten- sion between the utopian and the civil components in the construction of modern politics; between ‘rev- olutionary’ and ‘normal’ politics, or between the general will and the will of all; between civil society and the state, between the individual and the collec- tivity. These different interpretations of cultural pro- grams of modernity entailed also different conceptions of authority and its accountability, dif- ferent modes of protest and political activity, of ques- tioning the basic premises of the modern order and different modes of institutional formations. These multiple patterns of modernity developed first in Europe, and gathered momentum with the expansion of modernity beyond Europe first to the Americas and later to Asian and African societies where development went beyond the initial model of Western society. Concomitantly, there developed in Western societies as well new discourses which trans- formed the initial model of modernity and under- mined the original vision of modern and industrial society with its hegemonic and homogenizing vision. There emerged a tendency to distinguish between Zweckrationalität and Wertrationalität , and to recog- nize a multiplicity of Wertrationalitäten. Cognitive rationality – especially as epitomized in the extreme forms of scientism – has certainly been dethroned from its hegemonic position, as has also been the idea of the ‘conquest’ or mastery of the environment
- whether of society or of nature.
The different periods of modernity
The basic contours of modernity have changed in different periods or stages of its development, which can be distinguished – even if somewhat schemati- cally. One central stage is the period between the beginning of the 19th century up to the Cold War, a period characterized by the predominance of the nation, revolutionary states, of liberal and later more state-directed capitalism, and Western, mostly European, civilizational hegemony as well as by the expansion throughout the world of the ‘classical’ major modern social movements, especially social- ism, communism and nationalism. From the end of the Second World War until the mid-1960s, with the movements against the
Vietnam War, the vision of modernity as manifest in the nation and revolutionary states attained its apogee, the full maturation of the original program of modernity. During this period, the nation and revolutionary states and the international systems and frameworks in which they played a central role constituted the major institutional arenas in which the program of modernity was being implemented and in which the tensions and antinomies of moder- nity were played out. In Western nation-states the growing participation of all citizens, including women, was attained in the political arenas, as was also the development of a new social economic pro- gram that culminated in new forms of regulated cap- italism and of different types of welfare state. In this period, the major revolutionary states, the USSR and China, became more industrialized, developing par- allels to the development of the capitalist countries. After the Second World War, although many author- itarian regimes persisted in Eastern and Southern Europe and in Latin America with new ones emerg- ing in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia, fascist and national socialist ideologies disappeared as an alternative modern ideology. Moreover, the authori- tarian regimes in Europe and Latin America started to crumble in the 1960s and early 1970s. In this period of de-colonization, numerous new states were established in Asia and Africa. They largely followed two models – the ‘Western’ and the revolutionary (communist) ones. These new states were closely related to the hegemonic powers, the USA and the USSR, which continuously attempted to foster and control their respective satellite clients, even if, as was the case of many of the authoritarian regimes supported by the USA, their principles contradicted the ideologies of their patron states.
The contemporary scene: beyond
the hegemony of the nation and
revolutionary state models
From the 1960s to the early 20th century and beyond there appeared a new phase in the continu- ous reconstitution of modernity (Eisenstadt, 1999a, 1999b, 2003, 2006), entailing new institutional and ideological trends of globalization that challenge ear- lier modes of modernity. The major characteristics of this change combine a transformation of the prevalent hegemonic institu- tional patterns and cultural premises of modern soci- eties; the development of tendencies to democratization; intensive globalization; far-reach- ing changes in the international systems and shifts of hegemonies within them; and the development of
new patterns of inter-civilizational relations. All of these entail the crystallization of new patterns of multiple modernities beyond the classical models of the nation and the revolutionary states. The common structural core of these processes has been the growing dissociation of social, econom- ic, political, family and gender roles, organizations and relations from the hitherto macro formations, especially from the class relations characteristics of the nation-state along with a growing dissociation between political centers and major social and cul- tural collectivities and the development of multiple relatively autonomous networks and clusters which cut across many organizations and ‘societies’. Occupational, family, gender and residential roles have become dissociated from ‘Stande’, class, party- political, as well as existing territorial frameworks, tending to crystallize into continuously changing clusters. The former relatively rigid, homogeneous definition of life patterns became weaker and more porous. Closely related were the reconstitution of the place of territoriality in the structuring of social roles and collective identities and a decoupling of the hitherto predominant relations between local and global frameworks (Sassen, 2006). There also devel- oped a decomposition of the relatively compact image of the conceptions of ‘civilized man’ as embodied in the classical nation-state and in the concomitant life worlds of different social sectors and classes. These developments crystallized within all the major institutional arenas of modern societies. In the economic arena there was a decline of the Keynsian Welfare State, with its combination of steady and reasonably rapid economic growth, near-full employment, rising real wages and standards of con- sumption, government intervention through mone- tary and fiscal policies, the development of welfare systems and some socialist experiments, and the domination of the American dollar. This model lost its hegemony with neo-liberal monetarist policies taking its place world-wide and epitomized in the Washington Consensus. Concomitantly, there crys- tallized patterns of globalization, entailing the increased migrations of labor and the disembedding of different occupational sectors from existing eco- nomic frameworks. This gave rise to new forms of transnational capitalism on the one hand together with different forms of Voodoo capitalism on the other (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999). In the political arena throughout the world, the ‘third wave’ of democratization, reinforced by changes in technologies of communication and mass media, was characterized by demands of wider sec- tors for growing access to and participation in socie-
tal, transnational and local-political arenas. Concomitantly, there crystallized a paradoxical com- bination of the expansion of democratic ideology and institutions, seemingly the only acceptable game in the international arena; together with the weaken- ing of many of the basic institutions of representative democracy and the strengthening of executive and judicial institutions. Political parties, some trans- formed into ‘cartel parties’, were weakened while populist tendencies and single-issue lobbying became stronger. There developed different patterns of ‘segmented’ sovereignty and multiple heteroge- neous, internal as well as trans-state public spheres, and different patterns of distinct, non-electoral representatives of non-political democracy (Rosanvallon, 2008). In line with the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, the weak- ening of the institutions of representative democracy has been connected with the growing de-ideologiza- tion of the conception of the political arena as embodying ideals of the original program of moder- nity. The political discourse increasingly focuses on ranges of de-ideologized issues – as against the emphasis on class relations, and on the possible transformation of the centers of the respective soci- eties. New status struggles developed around the types of welfare benefits distributed by the State, with a focus on the attainment of entitlements. A politics of identity promulgated different types of group autonomy, and new spaces in which different ‘minorities’ – ethnic, religious, linguistic and region- al – have attempted to disseminate their distinct identities in the media and in educational institu- tions, heightening issues in public discussion and political contestations. At the same time a paradoxical situation devel- oped in the internal political scenario of many soci- eties all over the world. On the one hand, there developed in most societies a continual strengthen- ing of the ‘technocratic’ ‘rational’ secular policies in various arenas, such as education, family planning and the like. But on the other hand, these policies could not cope adequately with most of the new problems attendant on the processes of globalization or with the potential destabilization of political frameworks and with the burgeoning politics of identity. Concomitantly, contemporary transformations shifted from viewing the political centers or large- scale macro-societal units, as well as the technologi- cal-economic arenas, as the arenas of the implementation of charismatic social visions in the overall frameworks of modernity or modernities, attesting to the fact that modernity does not have a natural end-point. In the wake of a de-charismatiza- tion of social formations such as nations or states and
the instability of the international system, these developments are further intensified by the inability of international actors and agencies to cope with many of the social problems attendant on the process of globalization. Thus, in the national and international arenas there was a transfer of power to new centers of hegemony, to various global political institutions and organizations. This multiplication of dispersed cen- ters of power, often connected with the new actors in the international scene, challenged the existing inter- national order and hegemonic institutions.
Contemporary globalization
All these developments analyzed above have been closely related to, indeed interwoven with, the processes of contemporary globalization. These new patterns of globalization have been closely related with the opening up of opportunities for women in lifestyle, marriage and motherhood; growing education and urban growth; the skewing of the population toward young age-groups, all of which allowed more effective expression of discon- tent. But on the other hand, there also developed new social problems on an international scale, among them rising divorce rates, prostitution, delin- quency, epidemics (easily spread with environmental and climatology problems) and threats and instabili- ty attendant on nuclear proliferation, as well as all the dislocations analyzed above. The most distinctive characteristics of the con- temporary in comparison with ‘earlier’ globalizations have been not just the extent of the global flow of different resources and the development of new forms of global capital and economic formations, important as they have been. Indeed the global flows especially of economic resources that developed in this period were not necessarily greater than flows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather, char- acteristics of contemporary globalization have been: first, the predominance of new forms of internation- al capitalism, with the transition from industry to services along with the disembedding of segments of the workforce, especially those connected with the high-tech and financial activities – from existing eco- nomic organizations, now ‘denationalized’ or ‘deter- ritorialized’; second, the tendencies to the global economic neo-liberal hegemony promulgated among others by the major international agencies – the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization – fully embodied in the Washington Consensus; third, extended international migrations and the dispossession of many social sectors – indeed of whole societies – from hitherto relatively stable
economic and cultural niches; and fourth, the move- ment of hitherto peripheral societies and social sectors into the centers of the respective national and international systems. Fifth, there have been growing discrepancies and inequalities among various central and peripheral sectors within and between societies. Of special importance in this context have been the combina- tions of discrepancies between social sectors which were incorporated into the hegemonic financial and ‘high-tech’ economic frameworks and those which were left out; the closely connected decline in the standard of living of the latter giving rise to acute feelings of dislocation and dispossession. Most visi- ble among such dislocated or dispossessed groups were, first, groups from the middle or lower echelons of the more traditional sectors, hitherto embedded in relatively stable, even if not very affluent, social and economic and cultural frameworks, and now trans- ferred into the lower echelons of new urban centers; and second, various highly mobile, ‘modern’ educat- ed groups – professionals, graduates of modern uni- versities and the like – who were denied autonomous access to and participation in the new political cen- ters; and third, large social sectors which were elimi- nated from the workforce. A far-reaching outcome of these processes was the economic and occupational polarization of many sectors, removed from the regular labor force and placed in insecure positions, marginalized as citizens and productive members of the community (Apter, 2008). Many inequalities and dislocations that attended these processes of globalization coalesced with reli- gious, ethnic or cultural divisions. They are especial- ly visible in the Diasporas among the new religious, ethnic and national virtual communities, a very important new component of the international scene, and important part of new anti-globalization social movements, attesting to ‘the power of small numbers’ (Appadurai, 2006).
New movements of protest
One of the most important, indeed crucial, manifes- tations of the new constellation of modernity has been the crystallization of new types of social move- ments of protest – among them also the ‘anti-global- ization’ ones – new constellations of which transformations have often been presented as the harbingers of far-reaching changes of the contempo- rary institutional and cultural scene, of the exhaus- tion of the entire program of modernity. The various ‘anti-global’ movements have become closely interwoven with movements of the
mid-1960s, such as the ‘movements of 1968’, the ‘postmodern’, ‘post-materialist’ women’s movements, and ecological movements which started from the West and expanded throughout the world, entailing the radical transformation of orientations and themes of protest and the revolutionary imaginaires. Contrary to the basic orientations of the earlier, ‘classical’ social movements, which focused above all on the constitution and possible transformations of the socio-political center, of nation or state, or of the boundaries of major macro-collectivities, the new movements of protest were oriented to what one scholar has defined as the extension of the systemic range of social life and participation, manifest in demands for growing participation in work, different communal orientations, citizen movements and the like. In Habermas’ words these movements moved from focusing on problems of distribution to emphasis on a ‘grammar of life’ (Habermas, 1981: 33). Among sectors dispossessed by processes of globalization, there was a growing emphasis on exclusivist, particularist themes often formulated in highly aggressive terms (Eisenstadt, 2006: 185–220).
Transformations of the model of the
nation- and revolutionary-state: new
patterns of collective identities
All the processes analyzed above – of decoupling between different components of the social order, changes in the international arenas and contempo- rary globalization – have crystallized into new pat- terns of contemporary modernities entailing the transformation of the basic premises of nation- and revolutionary-state, giving rise to the crystallization of collective identities in political formations and in international relations. All the developments analyzed above entailed transformations of the nation- and revolutionary- states which had been conceived as the epitome of the modern program. These transformations includ- ed a de-charismatization of the hitherto predomi- nant models of nation- and revolutionary-state as well as of class-relations in the frameworks of these states. While the political centers of the nation- and revolutionary-states are still major agencies of resource distribution as well as strong actors in the major international arenas, many global (mostly financial) actors have become very powerful so that the control of the nation-state over its own econom- ic and political affairs was reduced. The continuous strengthening of the ‘technocratic’ ‘rational’ secular policies in various arenas, as noted above, did not change the trend. The nation- and revolutionary- states also lost some of their – never total – monop-
oly of internal and international violence to many local and international groups of separatists or ter- rorists. No nation- or revolutionary-state, or groups of nation-states could control recurring violence. Above all, having been perceived as the major bear- ers of the cultural program of modernity, the basic frameworks of collective identity, and as the major regulators of the various secondary identities, the nation-states and the revolutionary-states became weakened and are no longer closely connected with a distinct cultural and civilizing program. Transformations of the premises of the nation-states entailed a reconstitution of the relations between ter- ritory, authority and rights (Sassen, 2006); the decoupling of the basic components of the classical nation-state – citizenship, patterns of entitlement, the constitution of public spaces and modes of polit- ical participation. In all states there develop different patterns of complex, indeed fragmented sovereignty (Grande and Pauly, 2005) reinforced by growing diversity of modes of representation. Yet, while many of the nation-states continued to play an important role in the international arenas with some of them increasing their power (Mann, 1997), they were no longer the major rule-setters there or even in the internal political arenas of their respective elites. They competed with one another and with the new actors not only about their respec- tive interests, but also about their ability to partici- pate in setting up ground rules; and criteria for the legitimation of those rules. Concomitantly, the boundaries of relatively closed collectivities and social arenas were weakened. Under the impact of intensive processes of globaliza- tion, nuclei of new cultural and social identities which transcend the existing political and cultural boundaries of the predominant nations and revolu- tionary ones crystallized and there developed new nuclei of cultural and social identities which tran- scended existing political and cultural boundaries. In many of these settings, local and transnational orien- tations were often brought together in new ways (Juergensmeyer, 2003). Most important among the repercussions of these developments were redefinitions of boundaries of collectivities and of new ways of combining ‘local’ and global transnational or trans-state components in collectivities. Most hitherto ‘subdued’ identities – ethnic, local, regional and religious – have acquired a central role on the contemporary national and inter- national public scenes and moved, as it were, into the centers of their respective societies and into the inter- national arenas. They claim autonomy in central symbolic and institutional spaces, be it in education- al programs, in public communications and media, and pose far-reaching claims for a redefinition of
many ways similar and often related to the major religious and ‘secular’ critics of Enlightenment from its very beginning, starting with de Maistre, the romantics; also many of the populist (Slavophiles and the like) in Central and Eastern Europe, not only in Russia, and in general those who have emphasized the expressivist dimension of human experience, then moving, of course, through Nietzsche to Heidegger (Taylor, 2007). Such attempts at the reformulation of civiliza- tional premises have also been taking place in new institutional formations such as the European Union, in different local and regional frameworks, as well as in the various attempts by the different ‘peripheries’ – as for instance in the discourse on Asian values, to contest the Western, especially American, hegemony, as well as to forge their own constitutive modernities. The debates and confrontations in which these actors engage and confront each other may be for- mulated in ‘civilizational’ terms, but these very terms as constructed in such a discourse, are couched in the language of modernity, in totalistic, essentialistic and absolutizing terms derived from the basic premises of the discourse of modernity, even if they often draw on older religious traditions. When such clashes are combined with political, military or economic strug- gles and conflicts, they can indeed become very vio- lent. They may give rise, in contrast to the symmetric wars between nation-states framed by the Westphalian order, to non-symmetric wars which became a continual component of the international order (Münkler, 2003). Of special importance was the multiplication and intensification of aggressive terrorist movements and inter-civilizational contesta- tions and encounters, which became a seemingly permanent component of the new international inter-civilizational scene.
Annotated further reading
Apter D (2008) Some contrarian perspectives on the political consequences of globalization. New Global Studies 2(1). One of the most incisive critical examinations of the dislocations engendered by contemporary globaliza- tion. Eisenstadt SN (2000) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The analysis of the religious sectarian origins of modernity and the continuity of sectarianism and of Jacobin, fundamentalist components in modernity. Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. The core statement of the program of multiple modernities emphasizing both the common core of
modernity as a distinct civilization and the great variability thereof in different societies throughout the world. The different articles in this volume ana- lyze several distinct cases of modernity. Faubion JD (1993) Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. A very insightful analysis of the transformation of national collective identities in contemporary societies under the impact of globalization. Grande E, Pauly LW (2005) Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. A systematic analysis of the transformation of pat- terns of sovereignty in contemporary societies. Habermas J (1981) New social movements. Telos 49 (Fall): 33–7. An incisive analysis of the distinct characteristics of the new social movements with emphasis on gram- mar of life as compared with classical social and cul- tural movements. Habermas J (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Possibly the most forceful research of the view of modernity as a progressive and emancipatory move- ment. Inkeles A, Smith DH (1974) Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. One of the most systematic and forceful analyses of the distinct characteristics of modern ‘open’ penalty based on intensive research in several countries and sectors with special emphasis on the impact of indus- trialization in the development of these characteris- tics. Kolakowski L (1990) Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press_._ A collection of brilliant essays by the leading Polish philosopher emphasizing the internal tensions and contradictions of modernity. In contrast to the pro- gressive optimistic view of modernity, it presents modernity as being continually challenged by its implementation in different settings – being indeed on endless trial. Lefort C (1988) Democracy and Political Theory , trans. Macey D. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. A forceful statement on the core characteristics of modernity as a distinct cultural and political program
- mainly the loss of markers of certainty it entails. Lerner D (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East , Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. A classical statement based on interviews in Turkey. The book highlights the differences between tradi- tional and modern societies or sectors thereof, emphasizing the ‘closure’ of the former and the open- ness of the latter, especially in terms of their accept- ance of new visions and premises and of personal relations.
Tiryakian E (1996) Three metacultures of modernity: Christian, Gnostic, Chthonic. Theory, Culture and Society 13(1): 99–118. A sharp analysis of the different metacultures of modernity with their implications for the dynamic tensions and antinomies thereof. Wagner P (1994) A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline. London: Routledge. A comprehensive analysis of the core tensions of modernity – mainly that between liberty and devel- opment as they evolved in different modern contexts. Wittrock B (2002) Modernity: one, none or many? European origins and modernity as a global condi- tion. In: Eisenstadt SN (ed.) Multiple Modernities. Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 31–60. A discussion of the problematic of multiple moderni- ties, of the relations between the original European modernity and its expansion and transformation throughout the world, emphasizing the problematic of the very existence of a global modern civilization and its major characteristics.
References
Appadurai A (2006) Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Apter D (2008) Some contrarian perspectives on the political consequences of globalization. New Global Studies 2(1). Arnason JP, Eisenstadt SN, and Wittrock B (2005) Axial Civilizations and World History. New York: Brill. Berman M (1988) All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso. Blumberg H (1987) Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Castoriadis C (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Comaroff J, Comaroff JL (1999) Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: Notes from the South African postcolony. American Ethnologist 26: 279– Deutsch K (1961) Social mobilization and political development. American Political Science Review LV(3): 493–514. Durkheim E (1973) On Morality and Society. Selected Writings. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Eisenstadt SN (1973) Tradition, Change and Modernity. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (1992) Democracy and Modernity. New York: Brill. Eisenstadt SN (1999a) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution: The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eisenstadt SN (1999b) Paradoxes of Democracy: Fragility, Continuity, and Change. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications.
Eisenstadt SN (2003) Cultural programs, the construc- tion of collective identities and the continual recon- struction of primordiality. In: Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Part I. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 75–134. Eisenstadt SN (2006) The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity. Leiden: Brill. Eisenstadt SN, Giessen B (1995) The construction of collective identity. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 36(1): 72–102. Elias N (1978–82) The Civilizing Process. New York: Urizen Books. Elias N (1983) The Court Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Faubion JD (1993) Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Foucault M (1965) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault M (1973) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault M (1975) Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault M (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Grande E, Pauly LW (2005) Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Habermas J (1981) New social movements. Telos 49 (Fall): 33–7. Inkeles A, Smith DH (1974) Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jowitt K (1993) New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction. Berkeley: University of California Press. Juergensmeyer M (ed.) (2003) Global Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kamenka E (ed.) (1983) The Portable Karl Marx. New York: Viking Press. Kolakowski L (1990) Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lefort C (1988) Democracy and Political Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lerner D (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Mann M (1997) Has globalization ended the rise and rise of the nation state_? Review of International_ Political Economy 4(3): 472–96. Miller D (1997) Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford and New York: Berg. Mitzman A (1969) The Iron Cage: A Historical Interpretation of Max Weber. New York: Grosset and Dunlap. Münkler H (2003) Über den Krieg: Stationen der Kriegsgeschichte in Spiegel ihrer theoretischen Reflexion. Weilerwist: Velbrück. Rosanvallon P (2008) Counter-Democracy: Politics in the Age of Distrust. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sassen S (2006) Territory – Authority – Rights: From
2010-Modernity and modernization first years notes
Course: Education I: Learner & Learning (EDC11ES)
University: Central University of Technology
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