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Sociopedia.isa© 2010 The Author(s)

© 2010 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of Sociopedia.isa)SN Eisenstadt, 2010, ‘Modernity and modernization’, Sociopedia.isa, DOI: 10.1177/205684601053

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Theories of modernization and theframework of multiple modernitiesThe major approach to the study of modernity andmodernization presented here goes against some ofthe explicit and implicit assumptions of the classicalsociological tradition and above all of the theories ofmodernization predominant in the 1950s and 1960sas well as against some of the themes dominant incontemporary discourse.

The ‘classical’ theories of modernization from the1950s identified the core characteristics of modernsociety as the decomposition of older ‘closed’ institu-tional frameworks and the development of new struc-tural, institutional and cultural features andformations, and the growing potential for socialmobilization (Deutsch, 1961). The most importantstructural dimension of modernity was seen in thetendency to structural differentiation – manifestamong others in growing urbanization; commodifica-tion of the economy; the development of distinctivechannels of communication and agencies of educa-tion. On the institutional level such decompositiongave rise to the development of new institutional for-mations, such as the modern state, modern nationalcollectivities, new market, especially capitalist,

economies, which were defined as autonomous, andwhich were regulated by specific mechanisms of themarket; of bureaucratic organizations and the like. Inlater formulations the development of suchautonomous spheres, each regulated by its own logicwas often defined as the essence of modern institu-tional formations. Concomitantly modernity was seenas bearing a distinct cultural program, and shaping adistinct type of personality.

These theories, like the classical sociological analy-ses of Marx, Durkheim and at least one reading ofWeber (Durkheim, 1973; Kamenka, 1983; cf. Weber,1978, 1968a, 1968b) implicitly or explicitly conflatedmajor dimensions of modernity as they saw it devel-oping in the West. In these approaches, analyticallydistinct dimensions combine and become historicallyinseparable. An often implicit assumption of modern-ization studies was that cultural dimensions of mod-ernization, the ‘secular’ rational worldview includingan individualistic orientation, are necessarily inter-woven with the structural ones. Most of the classics ofsociology as well as studies of modernization of the1940s and 1950s and the closely related studies of

Modernity and modernizationSN 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 majoranalytical approaches related to the major social structures and the contemporary state. The core of thisanalysis 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

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Eisenstadt Modernity and modernization

convergence of industrial societies have assumed thatthe basic institutional formations that developed inEuropean modernity, and the cultural program ofmodernity 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 inthe West, and will ultimately prevail throughout theworld.

But the reality that emerged proved to be radical-ly different. Developments in the contemporary eradid not bear out the assumption of ‘convergence’ ofmodern societies. They actually indicated that thevarious modern autonomous institutional arenas –the economic, the political, the educational or thefamily are defined and regulated and combine in dif-ferent ways in different societies and in differentperiods of their development. The great diversity ofmodern societies, even of societies relatively similarin their economic development, like the majorindustrial capitalist societies in Europe, the USA andJapan, became more apparent. Far-reaching variabil-ity developed even within the West , within Europeitself, and above all between Europe and theAmericas – the USA (Sombart, 1976), LatinAmerica, or rather the Latin Americas.

This was even more evident with respect to thecultural and structural dimensions of modernity.While the different dimensions of the originalWestern project constituted crucial reference pointsfor tracing the processes of continual expansion ofmodernity, the developments in these societies havegone far beyond the original cultural program ofmodernity; 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 the1970s on that the best way to understand thedynamics of different ‘modernizing’ societies is to seethem as continuations of their traditional institu-tional patterns and dynamics, the institutional for-mations which developed in most societies of theworld have been distinctively modern, even if theirdynamics were influenced by distinctive culturalpremises, traditions and historical experiences. Ofspecial importance in this context was the fact thatthe most important social and political movementswhich became predominant in these societies werebasically modern, promulgating distinctive ways ofinterpreting modernity. This was true not only of thevarious reformist, socialist and nationalist move-ments which came into being in all these societiesfrom about the middle of the 19th century up to andafter the Second World War, but also of contempo-rary fundamentalist movements.

From the outset, in attempts in modern societiesto understand the nature of this new era or civiliza-tion, there developed two opposing evaluations,attesting indeed to the inherent contradictions ofmodernity. One such evaluation, implicit in theoriesof modernization and of the ‘convergence of indus-trial societies’ of the 1950s and the 1960s, sawmodernity as a progressive force which promises abetter, inclusive, emancipating world. The othersuch evaluation, which developed first withinEuropean societies and later resonated in non-Western European societies, espoused a highlyambivalent approach to modernity – seeing technol-ogy, or the empowerment of egoistic and hedonisticattitudes and goals as a morally destructive force.

The classics of sociology, de Tocqueville, Marx,Weber and Durkheim, were already highly consciousthat modernity was full of such contradictory – con-structive and destructive – forces. Such ambivalenceintensified in the 1920s and 1930s with the rise offascism and communism, the confrontation withwhich constituted one of the major concerns ofEuropean sociology in that period, above all in theFrankfurt School of the so-called ‘critical’ sociology.Paradoxically, after the Second World War, a newoptimistic view of modernity with but weak empha-sis on its contradictions prevailed, both in the ‘liber-al’ pluralistic, and the Marxist, especially thecommunist versions. But such an optimistic view ofmodernity gave way to a more pessimistic one withthe intellectual rebellion and protest of the late1960s and early 1970s, with the waning of the ColdWar and with the rise of ‘postmodernism’. The criti-cal themes and the ambivalent attitude to modernityre-emerged, emphasizing again the menacing aspectsof the development of technology and science suchas 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 worldwas not necessarily benign or peaceful; that it did notassure the continual progress of reason. The fact thatthese processes were continuously interwoven withwars, with imperialistic political constitutional andeconomic 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’ ofpre-modern attitudes. Increasingly, however, it wasrecognized 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

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generated a specifically modern barbarism. The mostimportant manifestation of such a transformationwas the ideologization of violence, terror and war,which became central to the constitution of themodern European state system, and of the nation-states as well as of the European imperialism oftenlegitimized in terms of some components of the cul-tural programs of modernity. The Holocaust becamea symbol of the negative, destructive potentialities ofmodernity, of the barbarism lurking within the verycore of modernity.

Modernity as a distinct civilization –the cultural program of modernity

Modernity has indeed expanded to most of theworld and given rise to civilizational patterns whichshare some central core characteristics, but whichunfold differently even if with cognate ideologicaland institutional dynamics. Moreover, far-reachingchanges, beyond the original premises of modernity,have also been taking place in Western societies.

Modernity crystallized into distinct institutionalformations – the modern capitalist systems and themodern state spheres system which developed in tan-dem with the establishment of new hegemonies andcounter-hegemonies with processes of dislocationand construction. They developed first of all inEurope and then became exacerbated with the impe-rial, colonial, economic and political expansion.These continually changing structural and institu-tional dimensions of modernity were interwovenwith the cultural program of modernity, giving riseto multiple modernities.

The interpretation of modernity, of the develop-ment of modern societies, and of the contemporaryscene in terms of ‘multiple modernities’ entails aview of modernity as a new type of civilization – notunlike the formation and expansion of the GreatReligions. According to this view, the core of moder-nity is the crystallization of a mode or modes ofinterpretation of the world, of a distinct social ‘imag-inaire’ (Castoriadis, 1987), an ontological vision or aset of epistemological presuppositions (Wittrock,2002) – or, in other words, of a distinct cultural pro-gram, combined with the development of a set orsets of new institutional formations with a centralcore of unprecedented ‘openness’ and uncertainty.The combination of such institutional formationsconstituted the core of modernity which generatedtensions and dynamics.

The cultural and political program of modernityentailed a shift in the conception of human agency,of autonomy, and of the place of the individual inthe flow of time. First of all, the premises and legiti-

mation of the social, ontological and political orderwere no longer taken for granted. Second, the core ofthis program was the ‘naturalization’ of cosmos, manand society and a quest for emancipation from thefetters of ‘external’ authority or tradition. Third, cen-tral to this cultural program was the assumption thatthis order can – and is – being constituted by con-scious human activities – and hence that it entailsthe possibility, even perhaps the certainty, of its con-tinual transformability.

The central core of this cultural program hasbeen formulated most succinctly by Weber.According to Faubion (1993: 113–15), ‘Weber findsthe existential threshold of modernity in a certaindeconstruction: of what he speaks of as the “ethicalpostulate that the world is a God-ordained, andhence somehow meaningfully and ethically orientedcosmos” … [He asserts that] one or another moder-nity can emerge only as the legitimacy of the postu-lated cosmos ceases to be taken for granted andbeyond reproach. … One can extract two theses: …Modernities in all their variety are responses to thesame existential problematic. … [They] are preciselythose responses that leave the problematic in ques-tion intact, that formulate visions of life and practiceneither beyond nor in denial of it but rather withinit, even in deference to it. …’

A central characteristic of the modern program ismanifest in the fact that within it an intensive reflex-ivity has developed around the basic ontologicalpremises as well as around the bases of the social andpolitical order of authority in society – a reflexivitywhich was shared even by the most radical critics,who in principle denied its legitimacy. The modernprogram focused not only on the possibility of differ-ent interpretations of the transcendental visions andbasic ontological conceptions prevalent in societies,but questioned the taken-for-granted nature of suchvisions and of the institutional patterns related tothem and of the institutional order (Lefort, 1988). Itgave rise to an awareness of the multiplicity of suchvisions and of the possibility that such conceptionscan indeed be contested – and continually reconsti-tuted. Such reflexivity was reinforced by the empha-sis on novelty, and on a break with the past. Thisreflexivity also entailed a conception of the future ofopen possibilities, in which the social and politicalorder can continually be transformed byautonomous human agency.

All these developments entailed, to followLefort’s (1988) formulation, the ‘loss’ of markers ofcertainty with respect to the ontological and theinstitutional orders alike, giving rise to contestationsaround the constitution of the major dimensions ofthe social order.

Such awareness was closely connected with two

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central components of the modern project, empha-sized in early studies of modernization by Lerner(1958) and later by Inkeles and Smith (1974). Firstis recognition of the possibility of undertaking agreat variety of roles beyond any fixed ascriptiveroles, and the receptivity to messages of such openpossibilities. Second is recognition of the possibilityof belonging to trans-local, changing communities.

These contestations were most fully played out inthe political arena, and the ways in which they wereplayed out were shaped first by the tendency torestructure center–periphery relations as the focus ofpolitical dynamics in modern societies; second, bythe openness of political contestation; third, by thetendency toward politicization of the demands ofvarious sectors of society and of conflicts betweenthem; 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 thementailing the loss of markers of certainty.

The other side of this ontological doubt, the lossof the markers of certainty, was the quest to over-come it. This quest was closely connected with theother components of the cultural program of moder-nity, namely those of the naturalization of the cos-mos, of nature and of humankind, and of humanemancipation and autonomy (Blumberg, 1987). Theautonomy of man – his or hers – but in the first for-mulation of this program certainly ‘his’ – comprisedseveral components: (1) reflexivity and exploration;(2) active construction of nature and its modernity,possibly including human nature, and of society. Thenaturalization of humankind and the cosmos as itinitially developed in Europe entailed several con-flicting premises: first, the change of the place ofGod in the constitution of the cosmos and ofhumankind; second the autonomy and potentialsupremacy of reason in the exploration and even inthe shaping of the world. Humanity and nature wereincreasingly perceived not as directly regulated bythe will of God, as in the monotheistic civilizations,or by some higher, transcendental metaphysical prin-ciples, as in Hinduism and Confucianism, or by theuniversal logos, as in the Greek tradition. Ratherthey were conceived as autonomous entities regulat-ed by internal laws that could be fully explored andgrasped by human reason, through human rationalinquiry. Thus the rational exploration of ‘natural’laws became a major focus of the new cultural pro-gram. It was assumed that exploration of these lawswould lead to the unraveling of the mysteries of theuniverse and of human destiny, and thus that reasonwould become the guiding force in the interpreta-tion of the world and in shaping human destiny. Formany, scientific exploration became the epitome ofrationalism.

Yet in this program there also developed a contra-dictory tendency – namely a belief in the possibilityof bridging the gap between the transcendental andthe mundane orders, of realizing in the mundaneorder some utopian, eschatological visions. Suchexploration was not purely passive or contemplative.This modern cultural vision also assumed that suchexploration would achieve not only the understand-ing, but even the mastery of the universe and ofhuman destiny.

The ‘rational’ exploration of nature and thesearch for potential mastery over it extended beyondthe technical and scientific spheres to that of thesocial, 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 andto the construction of the socio-political order.

Two complementary but also potentially contra-dictory tendencies about the best ways in which suchconstruction could take place developed within thisprogram. One was a ‘totalizing’ tendency that gaverise to the belief in the possibility of realizing utopi-an eschatological visions through conscious humanactions in the mundane orders of social life and/ortechnocratic planning and activities. The totalizingversion of this tendency assumed that those whomastered the secrets of nature and of human naturecould devise appropriate institutional arrangementsfor the implementation of the good society. The sec-ond major tendency was rooted in a growing recog-nition of the legitimacy of multiple individual andgroup 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 orderwere exacerbated in the discourse of modernity bythe fact that the opening up of numerous institu-tional and cultural possibilities was connected withthe dissolution of hitherto existing social bonds, giv-ing rise to the feeling of uprootedness. ‘Modernitypaints us all into a morass of perpetual disintegrationand renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambi-guity and anguish, a universe in which “all that issolid melts into air” ’ (Berman, 1988). The continu-ous prevalence of these tensions and the continuouschange inherent in modernity has added anothercrucial dimension to the repertoire of themes in theself-understanding of modern society, namely theperennial awareness of ambivalence inherent to thevery program of modernity. This ambivalence ismanifest in the fact that all programs of modernityentailed a ‘double’ orientation (Miller, 1997): anaffirmation of existing hegemonic arrangements andan attempt to find spaces in which a private or com-munal orientation can be instituted – indeed ofstimulating alternative modernities. Modernity was

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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 promissorythemes of modernity – the view of modernity asbearing within itself the continual progress of knowl-edge and of its rational application; of human eman-cipation, of continual inclusion of sectors of societywithin its frameworks and of the expansion of suchemancipatory forces to entire humanity. But it wasalso this combination that bore within itself theseeds of the possibility of the great disappointmentsand traumas attendant on the attempts to realizethese promises with modernity beset by internalantinomies and contradictions, continual critical dis-course and political contestations.

The promissory notes of modernityand the antinomies and tensions inthe cultural and political programs ofmodernity

The basic antinomies of modernity constituted aradical transformation of those inherent in the Axialcivilizations. Those focused first on the awareness ofa great range of possibilities of transcendental visionsand of the range of ways of their possible implemen-tation; second, they focused on the tension betweenreason and revelation or faith; and third, on theproblematic of the desirability of attempts at the fullinstitutionalization of these visions in their pristineform (Arnason et al., 2005; Tiryakian, 1996).

The transformation of these antinomies in thecultural program of modernity focused first on theevaluation of major dimensions of human experi-ence, and especially on the place of reason in theconstruction of nature, of human society and humanhistory; second, on the concomitant problem of thebases of morality and autonomy; third, on the ten-sion between reflexivity and the active constructionof nature and society; fourth, on that between total-izing and pluralistic approaches to human life andthe constitution of society; and fifth, on thatbetween control and autonomy, or discipline andfreedom.

The first major tension that developed within thecultural program of modernity was that with respectto the primacy of different dimensions of humanexistence, especially the tension between the predom-inance of reason as against the emotional and aes-thetic dimensions. Closely related were tensionsbetween different conceptions of the bases of humanmorality, especially whether such morality could bebased on or grounded in universal principles of rea-son, in instrumental rationality or in multiple

rationalities; and/or in multiple concrete experiencesand traditions of different human communities.

The second tension that developed within thecultural program of modernity was that between dif-ferent conceptions of human autonomy and its rela-tion to the constitution of humankind, society andnature, especially between reflexivity and criticalexploration on the one hand, and on the other onthe 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.e. between freedom andcontrol (Wagner, 1994).

Perhaps the most critical tension, in ideologicaland political terms alike, has been that between thepluralistic view which accepts the existence of differ-ent values and rationalities as against the view whichconflates such different values and above all differentrationalities in a totalistic way. This tension hasprobably been the most critical from the point ofview of the development of the different cultural andinstitutional patterns of modernity, and of itsdestructive potentialities.

Additional tensions emphasized strongly byWeber were those focusing on the contradictionbetween the basic premises and antinomies of thecultural and political programs of modernity and theinstitutional developments of modern societies (cf.Mitzman, 1969); the vicissitudes of the institutionalorder of this program. Their central focus was theexclusivist tendencies rooted both in the ontologicalpremises of this program as well as its institutional-ization. These entailed the continual dislocation andexclusion of various social sectors and collectivitiesfrom active participation in this order with claims toa universal emancipatory vision for the entire humanrace. Of special importance among these contradic-tions have been those between creative dimensionsinherent in the visions which led to the crystalliza-tion of modernity (the visions promulgated in theRenaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and theRevolutions) and the flattening of these visions, the‘disenchantment’ of the world inherent in their rou-tinization, in the growing bureaucratization of themodern world.

These contradictions were intensified by the ten-sion between the tendency to self-definition andconstitution of autonomous political units, statesand nation-states and the often intertwined develop-ment of local and transnational groups, networksand social spaces beyond their control.

It was around these tensions that there developed

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the different major criticisms of modernity. Themost radical criticisms of modernity denied the premises of the cultural program of modernityespecially in regard to the autonomy of individualsand the supremacy of reason. They denied that thesepremises could be seen as grounded in any transcen-dental vision, and that they could be marked as theepitome of human creativity. Such criticisms claimedthat these premises denied human creativity givingrise to the flattening of human experience and theerosion of moral order; and to the alienation of manfrom nature and from society (Eisenstadt, 1992,1999a).

These radical criticisms could be undertakenfrom two opposite, sometimes curiously comple-mentary, points of view: first a religious view, whichespoused the primacy of tradition and religiousauthority emphasizing that only religious orienta-tions assure the validity of transcendental visions andsecond, an ‘expressivist’ emphasis which denied theprimacy of reason as against the autonomy of humanwill and creativity. In its most radical versions, suchcriticisms would attempt to go beyond the culturalprogram of modernity by absolutizing one of itscomponents (see Wittgenstein, in Von Savigny,2001; Heidegger, in Sheehan, 1998).

These extreme criticisms of modernity, especiallythose which denied the legitimacy of modernity inits own terms, gave rise to the quest for total revolu-tion as a central component of the discourse ofmodernity. These longings were reinforced by anemphasis on the novelty of the modern program andits break with the past (Yack, 1986) – even if for themost part, the gnostic eschatological orientation inthe programs of modernity had its roots in Christianreligious tradition.

The major themes of the critical discourse ofmodernity were fully articulated in the arts, in liter-ature, in philosophical discourse and in ‘popular’ cul-ture. But beyond these tensions and contradictions,the various contestations around the different inter-pretations of modernity were articulated in modernsocieties and by new social, ethnic, national and reli-gious social movements which changed in differentperiods of modernity – but which constitute a cen-tral component of the modern scene. Continuallyinterwoven with the developments in the majorinstitutional arenas in the political, the economicand the educational systems and in systems of com-munications was a constitution of new collectivities.There developed continuous confrontations betweenthe claims of the cultural program of modernity tosome overreaching vision through which the modernworld becomes meaningful and the fragmentation ofsuch meaning, and the attempts and struggles of

these sectors to be incorporated in broader frame-works and centers.

The expansion of modernity and thedevelopment of international systemsand of multiple modernities

The tensions inherent in the cultural and politicalprograms of modernity were closely interwoven withthe expansion of modernity from Western to Centraland Eastern Europe, to the Americas and then toAsia and Africa, leading to the development of close-ly interwoven international, ultimately worldwidebut yet distinct institutional economic, political andsymbolic frameworks and systems, among the world-wide institutional, cultural and ideological frame-works and systems each of which was based on someof the premises of modern civilization, and each wasrooted in some basic institutional dimension(Tiryakian, 1985; Wallerstein, 1974).

The expansion of modernity, not unlike that ofthe Great Religions or of great Imperial regimes inthe past, undermined the symbolic and institutionalpremises of many societies, causing intensive disloca-tions while opening new possibilities. The combina-tion of military, political and economic expansionwith ideological visions rooted in distinct culturalprograms has been characteristic of all GreatReligions of the Axial Civilizations – to some extentof the Jewish, certainly of the Christian, Islamic orConfucian and to some extent also of Buddhism, aswell as of the Hellenistic and Roman Empires. Whatwas new in the modern era was the intensity ofmulti-centered and heterogeneous technologicaladvances, the dynamics of modern economic andpolitical forces, the changes and developments atten-dant on them and their impact on the multiple dis-locations of social sectors.

Of crucial importance in this context is the factthat its basic features crystallized out of the dynam-ics of Western and European Christian civilizationand societies, and that the expansion of modernityentailed its continual impingement on other civiliza-tions, among them the major Axial Civilizations,generating continual confrontations between theirpremises and those of European modernity.

Out of the continual interaction between theprocesses of change in the economic, technological,political and cultural arenas and the attempts toinstitutionalize the cultural and political program ofmodernity with its tensions and contradictions, theredeveloped in the various historical contexts a greatvariety of modern or modernizing societies, sharingmany common characteristics but also evincing great

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differences among themselves, i.e. a great variety ofmultiple modernities, epitomizing different interpre-tations of the cultural and political program ofmodernity (Eisenstadt, 2002).

Differences between the different cultural programs of modernity were closely related to thevicissitudes of their institutionalization. Thus, in thepolitical realm, they were closely related to the ten-sion between the utopian and the civil componentsin the construction of modern politics; between ‘rev-olutionary’ and ‘normal’ politics, or between thegeneral will and the will of all; between civil societyand the state, between the individual and the collec-tivity. These different interpretations of cultural pro-grams of modernity entailed also differentconceptions of authority and its accountability, dif-ferent modes of protest and political activity, of ques-tioning the basic premises of the modern order anddifferent modes of institutional formations.

These multiple patterns of modernity developedfirst in Europe, and gathered momentum with theexpansion of modernity beyond Europe first to theAmericas and later to Asian and African societieswhere development went beyond the initial model ofWestern society. Concomitantly, there developed inWestern societies as well new discourses which trans-formed the initial model of modernity and under-mined the original vision of modern and industrialsociety with its hegemonic and homogenizing vision.There emerged a tendency to distinguish betweenZweckrationalität and Wertrationalität, and to recog-nize a multiplicity of Wertrationalitäten. Cognitiverationality – especially as epitomized in the extremeforms of scientism – has certainly been dethronedfrom its hegemonic position, as has also been theidea 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 indifferent periods or stages of its development, whichcan be distinguished – even if somewhat schemati-cally. One central stage is the period between thebeginning of the 19th century up to the Cold War, aperiod characterized by the predominance of thenation, revolutionary states, of liberal and later morestate-directed capitalism, and Western, mostlyEuropean, civilizational hegemony as well as by theexpansion 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 themid-1960s, with the movements against the

Vietnam War, the vision of modernity as manifest inthe nation and revolutionary states attained itsapogee, the full maturation of the original programof modernity. During this period, the nation andrevolutionary states and the international systemsand frameworks in which they played a central roleconstituted the major institutional arenas in whichthe program of modernity was being implementedand in which the tensions and antinomies of moder-nity were played out. In Western nation-states thegrowing participation of all citizens, includingwomen, was attained in the political arenas, as wasalso 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 thisperiod, the major revolutionary states, the USSR andChina, 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 SouthernEurope and in Latin America with new ones emerg-ing in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia, fascistand national socialist ideologies disappeared as analternative modern ideology. Moreover, the authori-tarian regimes in Europe and Latin America startedto crumble in the 1960s and early 1970s. In thisperiod of de-colonization, numerous new states wereestablished in Asia and Africa. They largely followedtwo models – the ‘Western’ and the revolutionary(communist) ones. These new states were closelyrelated to the hegemonic powers, the USA and theUSSR, which continuously attempted to foster andcontrol their respective satellite clients, even if, aswas the case of many of the authoritarian regimessupported by the USA, their principles contradictedthe 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 andbeyond there appeared a new phase in the continu-ous reconstitution of modernity (Eisenstadt, 1999a,1999b, 2003, 2006), entailing new institutional andideological trends of globalization that challenge ear-lier modes of modernity.

The major characteristics of this change combinea transformation of the prevalent hegemonic institu-tional patterns and cultural premises of modern soci-eties; the development of tendencies todemocratization; intensive globalization; far-reach-ing changes in the international systems and shifts ofhegemonies within them; and the development of

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new patterns of inter-civilizational relations. All ofthese entail the crystallization of new patterns ofmultiple modernities beyond the classical models ofthe nation and the revolutionary states.

The common structural core of these processeshas been the growing dissociation of social, econom-ic, political, family and gender roles, organizationsand relations from the hitherto macro formations,especially from the class relations characteristics ofthe nation-state along with a growing dissociationbetween political centers and major social and cul-tural collectivities and the development of multiplerelatively autonomous networks and clusters whichcut across many organizations and ‘societies’.Occupational, family, gender and residential roleshave become dissociated from ‘Stande’, class, party-political, as well as existing territorial frameworks,tending to crystallize into continuously changingclusters. The former relatively rigid, homogeneousdefinition of life patterns became weaker and moreporous.

Closely related were the reconstitution of theplace of territoriality in the structuring of social rolesand collective identities and a decoupling of thehitherto predominant relations between local andglobal frameworks (Sassen, 2006). There also devel-oped a decomposition of the relatively compactimage of the conceptions of ‘civilized man’ asembodied in the classical nation-state and in theconcomitant life worlds of different social sectorsand classes.

These developments crystallized within all themajor institutional arenas of modern societies. In theeconomic arena there was a decline of the KeynsianWelfare State, with its combination of steady andreasonably rapid economic growth, near-fullemployment, rising real wages and standards of con-sumption, government intervention through mone-tary and fiscal policies, the development of welfaresystems and some socialist experiments, and thedomination of the American dollar. This model lostits hegemony with neo-liberal monetarist policiestaking its place world-wide and epitomized in theWashington Consensus. Concomitantly, there crys-tallized patterns of globalization, entailing theincreased migrations of labor and the disembeddingof different occupational sectors from existing eco-nomic frameworks. This gave rise to new forms oftransnational capitalism on the one hand togetherwith different forms of Voodoo capitalism on theother (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999).

In the political arena throughout the world, the‘third wave’ of democratization, reinforced bychanges in technologies of communication and massmedia, 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 ideologyand institutions, seemingly the only acceptable gamein the international arena; together with the weaken-ing of many of the basic institutions of representativedemocracy and the strengthening of executive andjudicial institutions. Political parties, some trans-formed into ‘cartel parties’, were weakened whilepopulist tendencies and single-issue lobbyingbecame stronger. There developed different patternsof ‘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 democracyhas been connected with the growing de-ideologiza-tion of the conception of the political arena asembodying ideals of the original program of moder-nity. The political discourse increasingly focuses onranges of de-ideologized issues – as against theemphasis on class relations, and on the possibletransformation of the centers of the respective soci-eties. New status struggles developed around thetypes of welfare benefits distributed by the State,with a focus on the attainment of entitlements. Apolitics of identity promulgated different types ofgroup autonomy, and new spaces in which different‘minorities’ – ethnic, religious, linguistic and region-al – have attempted to disseminate their distinctidentities in the media and in educational institu-tions, heightening issues in public discussion andpolitical 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, theredeveloped in most societies a continual strengthen-ing of the ‘technocratic’ ‘rational’ secular policies invarious arenas, such as education, family planningand the like. But on the other hand, these policiescould not cope adequately with most of the newproblems attendant on the processes of globalizationor with the potential destabilization of politicalframeworks and with the burgeoning politics ofidentity.

Concomitantly, contemporary transformationsshifted from viewing the political centers or large-scale macro-societal units, as well as the technologi-cal-economic arenas, as the arenas of theimplementation of charismatic social visions in theoverall frameworks of modernity or modernities,attesting to the fact that modernity does not have anatural end-point. In the wake of a de-charismatiza-tion of social formations such as nations or states and

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in the cultural domain of science, there developednew searches for manifestations of the charismatic inmore dispersed and less central arenas, and a recog-nition of a multiplicity of ‘authentic’, often antino-mian forms of life and of social interaction.

Changes in international arenas

The full impact of the processes analyzed above canbe understood only in the new historical context inwhich they have developed, the most importantaspects of which have been shifts in the constitutionof the international order; the development of newpower relations between different states, shifts in thehegemonies thereof; as well as the emergence of newactors, institutions and new regulatory arenas andrules in the international arena, as well as new pat-terns of globalization. All of them attested to the dis-integration of the ‘Westphalian’ international orderand contributed to the development of a ‘NewWorld Disorder’ (Jowitt, 1993). The development ofdisorder was intensified with the demise of the SovietUnion, the disappearance of the bipolar relative sta-bility of the ‘Cold War’, and of the salient ideologi-cal confrontation between communism and theWest. With one superpower, the US, there developedgreater autonomy within regional and trans-stateframeworks as well as new combinations of geopolit-ical, cultural and ideological conflicts over the rela-tions, standing and hegemony of the US andemerging global powers: the European Union, post-Soviet Russia and China.

In the second post-Soviet decade Russia, Chinaand to a smaller extent India and Brazil became moreindependent players in the international economicorder, pursuing independent policies, expressingtheir own geopolitical and economic interests, gener-ating changes in the balance of regional geopoliticaland economic formations, challenging the Americanhegemony, as well as the premises of the WashingtonConsensus. These challenges were propped up bysignificant changes in international economy – bythe, even if temporary, semi-monopolistic standingof Russia in the realm of natural gas and by the grow-ing economic strength of China and to some degreeof India. These tendencies became intensified withthe world-wide economic crisis of 2008 and 2009which unsettled economic hegemons even further.

Concomitantly, the international financial agen-cies, the World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund created after the Second World War,became prominent, often pursuing American inter-ests and ideologies but also developing as relativelyindependent actors and regulators of the internation-al economic trends which ultimately would chal-

lenge those interests. In addition, new internationalNGOs acted beyond the scope of any single nation-state and even beyond the more formal internation-al agencies.

Prominent in the international scene were first ofall important international agencies – the UN,regional agencies, above all those of the EuropeanUnion. Second there was a plethora of new legalinstitutions such as the International Court and theEuropean Constitutional Court, and multiple newinternational professional, legal, economic regulato-ry institutional networks.

Concomitantly, there developed new principlesof legitimation undermining the premises of statesovereignty prevailing since the 1815 Congress ofVienna. Most important among these were princi-ples of human rights transcending existing stateboundaries and calling state agencies to accountabil-ity. Coalitions of different trans-state, as well asnation-state political actors with new social move-ments around these principles influenced the politi-cal dynamics of states, including the authoritarianones. These developments have been presented bysome actors as constituting arenas of a new interna-tional civil society which transcends existing politicalboundaries.

An important aspect of the new internationalscene was the development of a paradoxical situationwith respect to the constitution of hegemony. Onthe one hand, after the fall of the Soviet Union, theUS remained the only superpower, in economic andmilitary terms. But at the same time its hegemonicstanding was challenged not only by opposition ofstates, movements and social sectors to policies thatit promulgated unilaterally. But beyond this, it wasoften also challenged in the name of principles orig-inated by the USA and adopted by the UN or theWorld Trade Organization. Thus there developed anew historical situation in which the hegemon lostthe monopoly of its own legitimation of the newglobal order.

In this period there also emerged a new inter-civ-ilizational ideological confrontation, manifest aboveall in the relations between Islam and the West, theturning point of which was the 9/11/ destruction ofthe Twin Towers in New York. This confrontation,which was often defined as attesting to a ‘clash of civ-ilizations’, has become a constant component of theinternational order, often combining geopoliticaland economic conflicts with religious-political onesrecalling in many ways the Cold War situation – butwithout the relatively stabilizing effects of the bipo-lar system. Crucial to this confrontation was theintensification and diversification of many, especial-ly, but not only Muslim terrorist groups which werenot controlled by any single state. Having added to

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the instability of the international system, thesedevelopments are further intensified by the inabilityof international actors and agencies to cope withmany of the social problems attendant on the processof globalization.

Thus, in the national and international arenasthere was a transfer of power to new centers of hegemony, to various global political institutions andorganizations. This multiplication of dispersed cen-ters of power, often connected with the new actors inthe international scene, challenged the existing inter-national order and hegemonic institutions.

Contemporary globalization

All these developments analyzed above have beenclosely related to, indeed interwoven with, theprocesses of contemporary globalization.

These new patterns of globalization have beenclosely related with the opening up of opportunitiesfor women in lifestyle, marriage and motherhood;growing education and urban growth; the skewing ofthe population toward young age-groups, all ofwhich allowed more effective expression of discon-tent. But on the other hand, there also developednew social problems on an international scale,among them rising divorce rates, prostitution, delin-quency, epidemics (easily spread with environmentaland climatology problems) and threats and instabili-ty attendant on nuclear proliferation, as well as allthe dislocations analyzed above.

The most distinctive characteristics of the con-temporary in comparison with ‘earlier’ globalizationshave been not just the extent of the global flow ofdifferent resources and the development of newforms of global capital and economic formations,important as they have been. Indeed the global flowsespecially of economic resources that developed inthis period were not necessarily greater than flows ofthe 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 toservices along with the disembedding of segments ofthe workforce, especially those connected with thehigh-tech and financial activities – from existing eco-nomic organizations, now ‘denationalized’ or ‘deter-ritorialized’; second, the tendencies to the globaleconomic neo-liberal hegemony promulgatedamong others by the major international agencies –the World Bank, the IMF and the World TradeOrganization – fully embodied in the WashingtonConsensus; third, extended international migrationsand the dispossession of many social sectors – indeedof 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 andinternational systems.

Fifth, there have been growing discrepancies andinequalities among various central and peripheralsectors within and between societies. Of specialimportance in this context have been the combina-tions of discrepancies between social sectors whichwere incorporated into the hegemonic financial and‘high-tech’ economic frameworks and those whichwere left out; the closely connected decline in thestandard of living of the latter giving rise to acutefeelings of dislocation and dispossession. Most visi-ble among such dislocated or dispossessed groupswere, first, groups from the middle or lower echelonsof the more traditional sectors, hitherto embedded inrelatively stable, even if not very affluent, social andeconomic 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 autonomousaccess 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 theeconomic and occupational polarization of manysectors, removed from the regular labor force andplaced in insecure positions, marginalized as citizensand productive members of the community (Apter,2008).

Many inequalities and dislocations that attendedthese 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 veryimportant new component of the internationalscene, and important part of new anti-globalizationsocial movements, attesting to ‘the power of smallnumbers’ (Appadurai, 2006).

New movements of protest

One of the most important, indeed crucial, manifes-tations of the new constellation of modernity hasbeen the crystallization of new types of social move-ments of protest – among them also the ‘anti-global-ization’ ones – new constellations of whichtransformations have often been presented as theharbingers 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 havebecome closely interwoven with movements of the

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mid-1960s, such as the ‘movements of 1968’, the‘postmodern’, ‘post-materialist’ women’s movements,and ecological movements which started from theWest and expanded throughout the world, entailingthe radical transformation of orientations andthemes of protest and the revolutionary imaginaires.

Contrary to the basic orientations of the earlier,‘classical’ social movements, which focused above allon the constitution and possible transformations ofthe socio-political center, of nation or state, or of theboundaries of major macro-collectivities, the newmovements of protest were oriented to what onescholar has defined as the extension of the systemicrange of social life and participation, manifest indemands for growing participation in work, differentcommunal orientations, citizen movements and thelike. In Habermas’ words these movements movedfrom focusing on problems of distribution toemphasis on a ‘grammar of life’ (Habermas, 1981:33). Among sectors dispossessed by processes ofglobalization, there was a growing emphasis onexclusivist, particularist themes often formulated inhighly aggressive terms (Eisenstadt, 2006: 185–220).

Transformations of the model of thenation- and revolutionary-state: newpatterns of collective identities

All the processes analyzed above – of decouplingbetween 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 thetransformation of the basic premises of nation- andrevolutionary-state, giving rise to the crystallizationof collective identities in political formations and ininternational relations.

All the developments analyzed above entailedtransformations of the nation- and revolutionary-states which had been conceived as the epitome ofthe modern program. These transformations includ-ed a de-charismatization of the hitherto predomi-nant models of nation- and revolutionary-state aswell as of class-relations in the frameworks of thesestates. While the political centers of the nation- andrevolutionary-states are still major agencies ofresource distribution as well as strong actors in themajor international arenas, many global (mostlyfinancial) actors have become very powerful so thatthe control of the nation-state over its own econom-ic and political affairs was reduced. The continuousstrengthening of the ‘technocratic’ ‘rational’ secularpolicies in various arenas, as noted above, did notchange the trend. The nation- and revolutionary-states also lost some of their – never total – monop-

oly of internal and international violence to manylocal and international groups of separatists or ter-rorists. No nation- or revolutionary-state, or groupsof nation-states could control recurring violence.Above all, having been perceived as the major bear-ers of the cultural program of modernity, the basicframeworks of collective identity, and as the majorregulators of the various secondary identities, thenation-states and the revolutionary-states becameweakened and are no longer closely connected with adistinct cultural and civilizing program.Transformations of the premises of the nation-statesentailed a reconstitution of the relations between ter-ritory, authority and rights (Sassen, 2006); thedecoupling of the basic components of the classicalnation-state – citizenship, patterns of entitlement,the constitution of public spaces and modes of polit-ical participation. In all states there develop differentpatterns of complex, indeed fragmented sovereignty(Grande and Pauly, 2005) reinforced by growingdiversity of modes of representation.

Yet, while many of the nation-states continued toplay an important role in the international arenaswith some of them increasing their power (Mann,1997), they were no longer the major rule-settersthere or even in the internal political arenas of theirrespective elites. They competed with one anotherand 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 thelegitimation of those rules.

Concomitantly, the boundaries of relativelyclosed collectivities and social arenas were weakened.Under the impact of intensive processes of globaliza-tion, nuclei of new cultural and social identitieswhich transcend the existing political and culturalboundaries of the predominant nations and revolu-tionary ones crystallized and there developed newnuclei of cultural and social identities which tran-scended existing political and cultural boundaries. Inmany of these settings, local and transnational orien-tations were often brought together in new ways(Juergensmeyer, 2003).

Most important among the repercussions of thesedevelopments were redefinitions of boundaries ofcollectivities and of new ways of combining ‘local’and global transnational or trans-state componentsin collectivities. Most hitherto ‘subdued’ identities –ethnic, local, regional and religious – have acquired acentral role on the contemporary national and inter-national public scenes and moved, as it were, into thecenters of their respective societies and into the inter-national arenas. They claim autonomy in centralsymbolic and institutional spaces, be it in education-al programs, in public communications and media,and pose far-reaching claims for a redefinition of

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citizenship and the rights and entitlements connect-ed with it.

Many of these new types of collective identitywere grounded, on the one hand, in smaller contin-ually reconstituted ‘local’ settings; and on the otherhand, in trans-state and national frameworks. Inaddition, there was a reconfiguration of the relationbetween primordial and/or sacred (religious) asagainst civil components in the constitution of col-lective identities entailing new modes of exclusionand inclusion. Closely related was the developmentwithin different social sectors of less ideologicallyhomogeneous interpretations of national identityand of modernity, in terms different from those ofthe Enlightenment. Modernity was redefined interms of distinct Greek or Turkish, Islamic, Indian orChinese models (Faubion, 1993).

Inter-civilizational settings: attemptsat the re-appropriation of modernity

The multiple changes analyzed above culminated inthe crystallization of new inter-civilizational orienta-tions and relations, which were perhaps most clearlymanifest in the development of new types of move-ments, especially of global anti-globalization move-ments.

While inter-civilizational ‘anti-globalization’ oranti-hegemonic tendencies combined with anambivalent attitude to the cosmopolitan centers ofglobalization developed in most historical cases ofglobalization (be it in the Hellenistic, Roman, theChinese Confucian or Hindu, in ‘classical Islamic’,as well as early modern ones), yet on the contempo-rary scene they become transformed. First, throughthe media they spread throughout the world.Second, they entailed an ongoing reconstitution in anew global context, of collective identities and con-testations between them. Third, they became highlypoliticized, interwoven with fierce contestationsamong them and the different hegemonic conflictsbetween political and ideological terms. Fourth, theygave rise to new inter-civilizational orientations. Thecentral focus of these orientations were attempts todecouple modernity radically from Westernization,and to take the monopoly of modernity away fromits origin in Western ‘Enlightenment’. Theyespoused new ‘civilizational’ visions, reformulatedimages and symbols of civilizational and religiousidentity – often formulated in terms of the universal-istic premises of their respective religions or civiliza-tions, grounded in their respective Axial religions,and attempted to transform the global scene in thoseterms. A central component of this discourse was ahighly ambivalent attitude to the West, manifest in

the expansion of strong world-wide anti-Americanmovements.

The various ‘anti-global’ movements becameclosely interwoven with student movements, citizens’movements, ecological, communal, religious andfundamentalist movements, which were the carriersof the transformed orientations and themes ofprotest and of the revolutionary imaginaire analyzedabove. The crucial differences from the point of viewof civilizational orientations between the major ‘clas-sical’ national movements and the new contempo-rary communal, and religious (above allfundamentalist) movements, stand out with respectto their attitude to the West and to the premises ofthe cultural and political program of modernity.They constitute part of a set of much wider develop-ments in Muslim, Indian and Buddhist societies,transforming the contestations between earlierreformist and traditional religious movements thatdeveloped in non-Western societies. Within theseanti-global movements, confrontation with the Westdoes not take the form of searching to become incor-porated into the modern hegemonic civilization inits terms, but rather to appropriate the new interna-tional global scene and modernity in terms of theirtraditions. These movements adopt a markedly con-frontational attitude to the West, and appropriatemodernity and the global system, formulating thediscourse of modernity in their own non-Western,often anti-Western, terms. This attitude to what isconceived as Western, is related to attempts todecouple modernity from Westernization and to doaway with the Western monopoly on modernity.These developments differ from earlier reformist andtraditional religious movements that developedthroughout non-Western societies from the 19thcentury on.

They aim to take over the modern program interms of their own civilizational premises, rooted,according to them, in the basic, universalistic prem-ises of their respective religions or civilizations, thusattempting to transform the global scene in civiliza-tional terms.

These visions are formulated in contestationscouched in ‘civilizational’ terms which often endowthem with absolutizing dimensions. At the sametime, however, the vistas grounded in these tradi-tions have been reconstituted under the impact of‘modern’ programs. Indeed these discourses, includ-ing far-reaching criticisms of the predominantEnlightenment program of modernity, resemble inmany ways the discourse of modernity as it devel-oped in centers of European modernities. Thus forinstance, many of the criticisms of theEnlightenment project as made by Qutub, possiblythe most eminent fundamentalist theologian, are in

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many ways similar and often related to the majorreligious and ‘secular’ critics of Enlightenment fromits very beginning, starting with de Maistre, theromantics; also many of the populist (Slavophilesand the like) in Central and Eastern Europe, notonly in Russia, and in general those who haveemphasized the expressivist dimension of humanexperience, then moving, of course, throughNietzsche to Heidegger (Taylor, 2007).

Such attempts at the reformulation of civiliza-tional premises have also been taking place in newinstitutional formations such as the EuropeanUnion, in different local and regional frameworks, aswell as in the various attempts by the different‘peripheries’ – as for instance in the discourse onAsian values, to contest the Western, especiallyAmerican, hegemony, as well as to forge their ownconstitutive modernities.

The debates and confrontations in which theseactors engage and confront each other may be for-mulated in ‘civilizational’ terms, but these very termsas constructed in such a discourse, are couched in thelanguage of modernity, in totalistic, essentialistic andabsolutizing terms derived from the basic premises ofthe discourse of modernity, even if they often drawon older religious traditions. When such clashes arecombined with political, military or economic strug-gles and conflicts, they can indeed become very vio-lent. They may give rise, in contrast to the symmetricwars between nation-states framed by theWestphalian order, to non-symmetric wars whichbecame a continual component of the internationalorder (Münkler, 2003). Of special importance wasthe multiplication and intensification of aggressiveterrorist movements and inter-civilizational contesta-tions and encounters, which became a seeminglypermanent component of the new internationalinter-civilizational scene.

Annotated further reading

Apter D (2008) Some contrarian perspectives on thepolitical consequences of globalization. New GlobalStudies 2(1). One of the most incisive critical examinations of thedislocations engendered by contemporary globaliza-tion.

Eisenstadt SN (2000) Fundamentalism, Sectarianism andRevolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The analysis of the religious sectarian origins ofmodernity and the continuity of sectarianism and ofJacobin, fundamentalist components in modernity.

Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities. NewBrunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. The core statement of the program of multiplemodernities emphasizing both the common core of

modernity as a distinct civilization and the great variability thereof in different societies throughoutthe world. The different articles in this volume ana-lyze several distinct cases of modernity.

Faubion JD (1993) Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer inHistorical Constructivism. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity 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-FirstCentury. 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 ofthe 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 ofModernity: Twelve Lectures. Cambridge, MA: MITPress. Possibly the most forceful research of the view ofmodernity 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 ofthe distinct characteristics of modern ‘open’ penaltybased on intensive research in several countries andsectors 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 Polishphilosopher emphasizing the internal tensions andcontradictions of modernity. In contrast to the pro-gressive optimistic view of modernity, it presentsmodernity as being continually challenged by itsimplementation in different settings – being indeedon endless trial.

Lefort C (1988) Democracy and Political Theory, trans.Macey D. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress. A forceful statement on the core characteristics ofmodernity 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 FreePress. 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 personalrelations.

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Tiryakian E (1996) Three metacultures of modernity:Christian, Gnostic, Chthonic. Theory, Culture andSociety 13(1): 99–118. A sharp analysis of the different metacultures ofmodernity with their implications for the dynamictensions and antinomies thereof.

Wagner P (1994) A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty andDiscipline. London: Routledge. A comprehensive analysis of the core tensions ofmodernity – 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 Europeanmodernity and its expansion and transformationthroughout the world, emphasizing the problematicof the very existence of a global modern civilizationand its major characteristics.

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SN Eisenstadt (PhD, Jerusalem 1947) was born in Warsaw in 1923. He is Professor Emeritusat the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Research Fellow at the Jerusalem Van LeerInstitute. Professor Eisenstadt is a member of many academies and recipient of honorary doc-toral degrees and national and international prizes, among them, in Israel: the Rothschild andEMET Prizes; and internationally: the McIver Award of the American Sociological Association,Amalfi, Balzan, Max Planck and the Holberg International Memorial Prize. Areas of majorinterest include comparative research of modernities and civilizations; the historical experienceof Japan from a comparative perspective; Jewish civilization and Israeli society; patterns of civilsociety and democracy; changing movements and heterodoxy in civilizatory dynamics; socio-logical and macro-sociological theory. Among his publications are Political Systems of Empires(1963); Power, Trust and Meaning (1995); Japanese Civilization – A Comparative View (1996);Israeli Society (1967); Paradoxes of Democracy, Fragility, Continuity and Change (1999);Fundamentalism, Sectarianism and Revolutions (2000); Die Vielfalt der Moderne (2000);Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities (2003); Explorations in Jewish HistoricalExperience (2004); and Sulla Modernità (2006).

résumé Cet article analyse les principales caractéristiques de la modernité, de la civilisation moderne.Il considère pour cela les principales approches analytiques qui sont liées à des structures sociales et auxétats contemporains. La notion de modernité multiple sera au cœur de cette analyse. Selon cette idée, lemeilleur moyen de comprendre le monde contemporain est de considérer la modernité comme l’histoirede continuels développements, formations, constitutions et reconstitutions de modernités multiples,changeantes, et souvent contestées et conflictuelles.

mots-clés développement ◆ globalisation ◆ modernisation ◆ modernité

resumen Este artículo analiza las principales características de la modernidad, de la civilización mod-erna; los principales métodos analíticos vinculados con las grandes estructuras sociales y el estado contem-poráneo. El núcleo de este análisis es la noción de modernidades múltiples. Esta idea plantea que la mejormanera de entender el mundo contemporáneo es considerar la modernidad como una historia de la for-mación, la constitución, la reconstitución y el desarrollo permanente de múltiples, cambiantes y, amenudo, contestadas y conflictivas modernidades.

palabras clave desarrollo ◆ globalización ◆ modernidad ◆ modernización

modernity and modernization - sage publications ltd | · 2 eisenstadt modernity and modernization...

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