24 Many Modernities : Sequential Theories : Goran Therborn

Juanita Kakoty and Dev Pathak

1. Introduction

Before intellectuals like Therborn, Eisanstadt and Dirlik of the present times talked of modernity in the plural, modernity, as a concept, was mostly understood in the sense of temporal progress and as that which has its origin in the West. There was a notion of historical development as progressive and linear, within which was embedded the idea of modernity. In this context, the colonizing countries from the western world, who sought to enlighten the colonized countries with education and their ideas of health, religion, etc. were invested with a sense of superiority and so were their cultural symbols. Hence, to take an example from the arts, while talking of modern and contemporary art in the 20th century, the histories that were often told as of significance were the cultural artefacts that were produced in Europe and the United States. Talking of not much back in time, foremost sociologist Anthony Giddens (1990: 1) also presented a Eurocentric definition of „modernity‟ as that which „refers to modes of social life or organisation which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence‟. Subsequently, a new breed of intellectuals emerged (Therborn, Eisanstadt and Dirlik) who regarded such trends of thought as problematic. They argued that with decolonization, since the Second World War, the voices of the colonized came to be recognised; and the histories of hitherto invisible and „backward‟ cultures, societies, people which co-existed spatially and temporally with a Eurocentric modernization discourse were restored. Thus, they talked of modernity not only in the plural, making possible the thought of „multiple modernities‟ from various cultures and societies at the same time, but also as that which valorizes the persistence of traditions and „civilizational‟ legacies (Dirlik 2003:276). Together with this, they highlighted the situation that the way we understand modernities is not free from the globalization phenomenon, from the global world. We will dwell more on this in the section on „multiple modernities‟; but before we proceed with it, we should know that efforts to overcome Eurocentrism in understanding „modernity‟ and efforts to include the voices, experiences and cultural legacies of „others‟ in discussions of modernity have sparked considerable deliberations and new theories in the fields of postcolonial studies to that of modernization studies in sociology and political science.

2. Who is Goran Therborn?

Goran Therborn is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Affiliated Professor of Sociology at Linnaeus University, Sweden. According to Clyde W. Barrow (1993:175), Therborn‟s work „constitutes a key transitional link between structuralism and the derivationist project‟. Therborn was born on 23 September 1941 and was educated at Lund University in sociology, politics, and economics, where he received his doctorate degree in 1974. He acted as Professor of Political Science in the Netherlands in the 1980s and taught, for shorter periods, in Eastern Europe as well as in many countries of Western Europe, in the Americas, in Asia and Australia.

Therborn is also celebrated as a civic intellectual, who has exhibited a lifetime commitment to universal freedom and equality. He has been a supporter of anti-imperialist and egalitarian social movements, and has written on Marxist and Radical theory. His research interests include pathways into and out of modernity; capital cities as representations of power; global processes of inequality, as well as other global processes and comparisons, particularly of sex-gender-family relations; contemporary radical thought and forces of possible change, etc. His works have appeared in twenty two languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, English, French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Hungarian, Polish, Belarussian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Korean.

3. Sequential Theories and Multiple Modernities

As a sociologist and commentator of incredible repute of current times, Goran Therborn has been interested in events vis-à-vis their histories that have contributed to consequences. He is interested in how these events affect us and our world-view today as well as in the socio-historical waves that they have created. It is in this very vein that he approaches a discourse on modernities. Dismissing Eurocentric, linear definitions of modernity, he states, „Modernity is better defined as a time orientation, instead of as a set of institutions… (but) Modernity in… non-Eurocentric sense, entails several different, competing master narratives, different social forces of, and conflicts between, modernity and anti-modernity, and different cultural contextualizations of the past–future contrast. But these different varieties do not simply coexist and challenge each other, they are entangled with each other in various ways‟ (Therborn 2003: 293). For him, modernity „does not per se designate a particular chronological period or any particular institutional forms. In principle, different periods of modernity, followed by de-modernization or re-traditionalization, are conceivable‟ (2003:294). He laments that „modernization theory‟ after the Second World War ignored the particular effects of colonial and imperial history although it „struck a liberal note of programmatic change‟, and that „world systems analysis‟ paid little attention to concerns other than colonial and semi-colonial economic underdevelopment (2003:297).

Thus, Therborn‟s ideas coincide with Eisenstadt‟s (2000:2) conceptualisation of „multiple modernities‟, where he argues that societies around the world have „developed distinctly modern dynamics and modes of interpretation, for which the original Western project constituted the crucial (and usually ambivalent) reference point. (Also) Many of the movements that developed in non-Western societies articulated strong anti-Western or even anti-modern themes, yet all were distinctly modern‟. Taking the discussion forward, Therborn (2003) asserts that the multiplicity of modernities could be approached in many different ways and that his own work has concentrated on different processes of emergence and their consequences, and on different discourses of past–future contrasts. But at the root of Therborn‟s conceptualisation of modernities is the assumption that modernity is a global phenomenon. Therborn (2003) distinguishes between the global and the universal as follows: „Globality‟ is characterised by finitude and connectivity; while „universality‟ is characterised by unlimited extension. Therborn looks at modernity as a global phenomenon instead of a universal one. Which means, in understanding modernity, one should consider focusing on global variability, global connectivity, global inter-communication, a global look at processes of change, of continuity and discontinuity. And it is this very association between the global and modernity which makes modernity a site of conflict and contestation. The global and globalization are interspersed with the homogenizing and integrative forces of capital along with accompanying organizational and cultural demands, thereby further complicating contradictions between and within societies. These contradictions also include the fundamental contradiction „between a seemingly irresistible modernity, and past legacies that not only refuse to go away, but draw renewed vitality from the very globalizing process‟ (Dirlik 2003: 275-276).

Therborn attempts an understanding of multiple modernities through ‘sequential theories‟ where he argues that „Human populations and social systems exist in time and space… (that) the structure as well as the cultures of human populations… have spatial and temporal dimensions. Spatial aspects of social structures and cultures refer to territorial extensions, boundaries, and territorial distributions or configurations of resources and constraints, and of identities, knowledge and values, respectively. Time also has extension, “duration”, boundaries, of ending and beginning, or of being in/out of step, and configurations, i.e. its sequences and cadences‟(Therborn 1995: 11-12). In other words, while understanding modernity as a phenomenon across cultures and societies, one has to understand that events and people have their respective duration and location; and so they need to be placed in a sequential order. His study of Europe and modernity is a classic example of understanding phenomenon through sequential theories, where the focus is on issues of integration, convergence, divergence, extension and inter-linkages of different cultural dimensions across state boundaries.

3.1. Four grand narratives on Modernity

While arguing for multiple modernities, Therborn (2003) brings to our notice four major master narratives of modernity in recent history, each embodying an alternative to the modern conception of time. Through these narratives, Therborn seeks to analyse the processes of emergence of modernity and their consequences; and maintains how these narratives contain discourses of past–future contrasts.

1. The European ‘Enlightenment’ narrative: It saw heteronomy and oppression in the past, emancipation and liberation in the future. It triggered a large number of social movements for national liberation, for working-class emancipation, for women‟s liberation, for gay liberation etc. in the centuries that followed.

2. The Kantian ‘Mündigkeit’ (maturity) narrative: It spoke of poverty, ignorance and stagnation in the past; progress, evolution and growth in the future. This perspective guided cumulative conceptions of knowledge, economic practices and policies as well as individual life-course endeavours.

3. The „competitive’ narrative: This perspective, believes Therborn, developed in the last third of the nineteenth century in social Darwinism, in competitive imperialism, and then in Fascism. Over time, it has made a powerful comeback in neoliberal conceptions of global competition. This narrative focused on victory, survival and success as consequences no matter what preconditions prevailed in the trajectory of time.

4. The ‘modernism as a cultural ideology’ narrative: This narrative is supposed to have been drawn from late nineteenth-century Europe and America, and projects a world-view of modernism as a cultural ideology, of artistic vanguardism, and of fashion. It has been expressed very little in political and economic forms. It differentiates between a past that is old and a future that will be full of vitality and creativity, forging a new community.

Therborn, while dwelling upon these master narratives of modernity, points out that each of these narratives is free from „single-mindedness‟. That is, each is aware about the dialectics between the past and the present, each contains contextual elements specific to the location, elements that exhibit integration, convergence, divergence, extension and inter-linkages of different cultural dimensions.

3.2. Approaching ‘Modernities’ as a Historical Conflict between Tradition And Modernity

Carrying on with his interest in sequential theories where he considers different processes of emergence and their consequences, and on different discourses of past–future contrasts, Therborn notes that another approach towards understanding „multiple modernities‟ is from the angle of historical conflict between modernity and tradition, or between modernity and anti-modernity. In this regard, he distinguishes four main conflictual alignments in the world that can be located in a logical space, and could be used as ideal types, although he admits that a country may have passed through more than one route (2003:298-300). He calls this the „geo-historical‟ approach that deals with the routes to and through modernity in the world; and he talked of the following routes:

1. The European route of civil war: This appeared in Europe as a new future orientation for past centuries out of conflicts internal to Europe, to North-Western Europe particularly. This route put up the forces of reason, enlightenment, nation, innovation, and change against the forces of eternal truths of the Church, of the wisdom of Ancient philosophy and art, of the Divine Rights of kings, of the ancient privileges of aristocracy, and the like.

2. The route through anti-modernity of settler societies: In the New Worlds of European settlement, anti-modernity was perceived in the local „others‟ of the settler societies that comprised the natives, the slaves and the ex-slaves. With Independence the external metropolis got rid of, but the local „others‟ continued to be perceived as „anti-modern‟ and came to torment the fabrication of the „moderns‟ of the New Worlds.

3. Modernity through colonial conquest: This route that fell mainly in the colonial zone from North-Western Africa to Southeast Asia, arrived with colonial conquest, through the forces of gun, quelling the internal forces of tradition.

4. Modernity carried forth by natives: Therborn talked of the final route where modernity was not carried forth by settlers, but by new generations of natives, who used against their conquerors what they had learnt from them.

Therborn thus talked about these four routes that entail a conflict between modernity and tradition, between modernity and anti-modernity, through which countries march towards or through modernity. And just as he maintains that a country can go through more than one of these routes, he professes that different modernities have had different „others‟ as obstacles or as categories of reference, which but points to the plurality inherent in the understanding of modernity.

4. Sequential Theorizing: A Study of Europe

Immerfall and Therborn (Therborn 2010) point out, that, today‟s Europe looks very different from how it was about a generation ago. And talking about social changes, they say, the 1960s and 1970s were „a time of turbulence‟ in the continent as education expanded, marriage and fertility rates went down, a shift towards service sector took place, women returned to the labour market, and as wealth and affluence grew. Yet, in their argument, these changes took different forms in different countries within Europe, particularly in Western and Eastern Europe where one could discern comparable but not converging patterns. At the same time, a few converging patterns can also be detected particularly with Europe becoming a global phenomenon through the European Union (EU). But these global and continental successes, as Therborn (2010) remarks, have not produced „a European society sure and confident of itself”, rather the EU project of „European integration‟ has brought forth „deep socio-political cleavages… a stark contrast between (political) elite commitment and widespread scepticism and questioning‟.

Therborn (2010) breaks the myth about linear modernization processes in Europe by sequentially analyzing converging and diverging patterns in the continent through three empirical levels: Structural, institutional, and social.

4.1. The Structural Level

Even though modern social indicators for health, labour market, income, security, housing, environment, economic growth, public debt, inflation, unemployment, etc. have been framed for the whole of Europe, huge differences exist among countries over these basic living and working conditions. Besides, even with the global prominence of the EU, it has been observed that there is no overall model of elite formation and elite integration as patterns of elite education and recruitment are still nationally structures. This is also true of the multinational enterprises which are „strongly nationally entrenched‟ and „the situation is even more closed for the political, judicial, and administrative elites where career mobility across national borders is almost nonexistent‟ (2010:669).

Nonetheless, Therborn identifies a few areas of convergence: Social exclusivity in European power structures; declining importance of armed forces; decline in church attendance and religious observance; rise of leisure and leisure-related convergence; a model of family and sexuality that had a huge global impact – later childbearing age, lower number of children, smaller households, higher emphasis on women‟s rights; and a shift towards an older and ethnically less cohesive society.

Thus, there have been patterns of both convergences and divergences. And as Therborn (2010:671) notes, a few gaps have opened up in recent times: „While changes in the occupational structure of eastern and central European countries since the collapse of state socialism can be seen as moving toward the social structures of western countries… we also see a “dewesternization” because of the reduction of female employment… Another example is the birth rates in southern Europe, which not only declined to the European average but, in a complete historical reversal, is now the lowest in Europe… Still another example is public bureaucracy. All over Europe public bureaucracy grew to one of the largest institutions… Yet, the continued impact of state traditions and the differential acceptance of ideas guiding reforms put an effective barrier to convergence… Cities represent still another case… Europe was created by cities, or city-states… Europe was always rife with strong city centres claiming more political clout and autonomy than other continents. Its cities were more important for the public representations of the upper classes… Yet, the direction of European urban development began to diverge in the last quarter of the last century. The European context is now made up of a few declining cities, many dynamic medium size and large cities, and two large “global” cities‟.

4.2. The Institutional Level

The institution of education has gone through a similar process of expansion all over Europe: Decline in the proportion of low education, improvement in the relative position of women, differentiation in the educational systems, and the introduction of management-based school reforms. Yet the timing of educational differences has differed and differences have remained in the national educational structures, with the EU exhibiting little power in determining the content of education (Therborn 2010: 671). At the same time, Therborn admits that there are convergences as the state is not only to act as an overseer but also as a provider of education. Besides, the welfare state, he says, is a European social invention and that„Europe still shows a higher degree of state interventionism and higher levels of social expenditures… In no European country the majority of the population relies on private insurance as it does in the United States‟ (2010:672). Yet, the „welfare state construction‟ followed national trajectories. Crime and criminal justice is another example of divergence that Therborn uses. Therborn (2010) points out that although drug trafficking, organized crime, illegal immigration, and terrorism call for cross-border collaboration in policing and judicial assistance, yet, historical variation in criminal justice looms large because even such universally criminalized acts as homicide, burglary, or assault are defined differently in different EU countries.

4.3. The Social Level

Delhey and Kohler‟s (Therborn 2010:673) findings relate that most people in Europe continue to compare their own living conditions within a national frame of reference, although a growing minority is beginning to take into consideration the living conditions in other countries. According to them, a majority of EU citizens feel proud to be European but EU membership does not matter in „trusting‟ or „not trusting‟ other nationalities; differences between „us‟ (co-nationals) and „them‟ (other Europeans) continue to matter. However, with increasing cross-border interaction and activities, Europe is emerging as a social space.

5. Entangled Modernities

Thus, through Therborn‟s study of Europe, we see how notions of modernity are not progressive and linear, but varied and „entangled‟. He, in fact, proposes „entangled modernities‟ as an analytical tool to study the phenomenon of modernity. In Therborn‟s (2003: 293) words, „Entangled modernities is a focus of reflection, investigation, and analysis, from different angles, with different eyes, and with open-ended, expectably variable outcomes. It emerges out of a profound dissatisfaction, first of all with Eurocentrism and, after the Second World War, North Atlanticist West-centrism of mainstream nineteenth- and twentieth-century views of the contemporary world and its history, but also with prevailing idealistic notions… of modernity and with straightened outlines of its history‟. With the concept of „entangled modernities‟, Therborn seeks to grasp events in history with a wide interdisciplinary grip, relating cultures and social institutions and social conflicts. Through it, he reiterates that modernism doesn‟t mean a break with the past, rather the past continues without a gap. For example, Therborn (2003) notes that British modernity has maintained an elaborate monarchy as its crown; the American Revolution maintained slavery and after its abolition, exhibited an explicitly institutionalized racism till about 1970; and that nationalism, a modern phenomenon, contains some resurrection of a past, imagined or not.

5.1. Disentangling Entanglements

According to Therborn (2003), entanglements, to be of use analytically, should be disentangled. He distinguishes three kinds of entanglements of modernities, each manifesting itself in several forms: (a) Space of entanglements (including what is intertwined and where is it intertwined); (b) processes producing entanglements; and (c) effects of entanglements. He admits that while disentangling entanglements, one should proceed with two major analytical perspectives: (a) By looking at institutions; and (b) by looking into people‟s minds or into „enculturations‟ (how people construct meanings).

Therborn, to take an example of „entangled modernities‟, talks of entanglement in popular mass culture (mass communication, art and music) of constituents from a range of global cultures since the end of the 20th century. He says that such entanglements are produced through complexities of communication and interaction, by selective reception and by side-effects. Turning his attention to effects of these entanglements, Therborn says, they result in a „nesting‟ of social and cultural systems, or in a composite habitus. For example, one can notice such nesting or habitus „of landowner politics and pioneering industrial economics in England, of venture capitalism, pervasive religiosity and ethnic complexity in the USA, of radical socialism, classical poetry, and imperial protocol in Maoist China, of feminine professionalism and peasant patriarchy in Kemalist Turkey‟ (2003:302). They all reflect how a major effect of various entanglements is hybrid modernities.

6. Conclusion

Thus, we see how Therborn, through his sequential theories that focus on spatial and temporal dimensions towards understanding a phenomenon, analyzes processes of emergence of modernity and their consequences; and maintains that narratives of modernity contain a past–future dialectics. He makes a case for multiple modernities by drawing attention to the four major narratives of modernities in recent history. And by demystifying the idea of linear modernity through a study of Europe using sequential theories, he shows how modernity as a concept cannot connote a progressive meaning, applicable universally to all countries across continents. In this vein, he argues that modernity can also be neither Europe-centric. Societies and cultures outside Europe have undergone their own trajectories which should be included in discourses of modernity. In doing so, he has removed the evangelistic ideas inherently associated with „modernity‟ when earlier theorists spoke of all that emerged from Europe as modern and superior.

7. Summary

A few important points learnt in this chapter are summarised as follows:

Intellectuals like Therborn, Eisanstadt and Dirlik have argued that decolonization, since the Second World War, has brought into recognition the voices of the colonized; and has restored the histories of hitherto invisible and „backward‟ cultures, societies and people that co-existed spatially and temporally with a Eurocentric modernization discourse (which looks at modernity as a linear progressive phenomenon).
These intellectuals, thus, talk of modernity in the plural, of „multiple modernities‟ from various cultures and societies, not in the single-minded sense of emerging only in the West. For them, modernity is also not a total break with the past, rather an on-going engagement with traditional and „civilizational‟ legacies.
Goran Therborn has been interested in how events affect us and our world-view, as well as in the socio-historical waves that they have created. It is in this vein that he approaches a discourse on modernities.
At the very root of Therborn‟s understanding of multiple modernities constitute his sequential theories where he argues that human populations and social systems exist in time and space. Hence, to understand modernity as a phenomenon across cultures and societies, one has to understand that events and people have their respective duration and location; and so they need to be placed in a sequential order. His study of Europe and modernity is a classic example of understanding phenomenon through sequential theories, where the focus is on issues of integration, convergence, divergence, extension and inter-linkages of different cultural dimensions across state boundaries.
Therborn dismisses Eurocentric, linear definitions of modernity and suggests that „modernity‟ should be defined as a time orientation, but, that, it does not per se designate a particular chronological period. He also suggests that modernity should not be perceived as a set of institutions either. In his definition, modernity entails several different, competing master narratives, with different social forces and conflicts between modernity and anti-modernity, and a past-future contrast that has different contexts for different cultures and societies.
Therborn asserts that the multiplicity of modernities could be approached in many different ways and that his own work has concentrated on (a) different processes of emergence and their consequences, and (b) on different discourses of past–future contrasts.
At the root of Therborn‟s conceptualization of modernities is the assumption that modernity is a global phenomenon. That modernity should be understood by considering global variability, global connectivity, global inter-communication, a global look at processes of change, of continuity and discontinuity.
Therborn speaks of four master narratives of modernity in recent history: (a) The European „Enlightenment‟ narrative; (b) The Kantian „Mündigkeit‟ (maturity) narrative; (c) The „competitive‟ narrative; and (d) The „modernism as a cultural ideology‟ narrative. In each of these narratives, he approaches an understanding of modernity through (a) different processes of emergence and their consequences, and (b) different discourses of past–future contrasts.
Elaborating on „different discourses of past–future contrasts‟ as another approach towards understanding „multiple modernities‟, Therborn talks of historical conflicts between „modernity and tradition‟, or between „modernity and anti-modernity‟: (a) The European route of civil war; (b) The route through anti-modernity of settler societies, (c) modernity through colonial conquest, and (d) modernity carried forth by natives. He regards these routes as ideal types, although he admits that a country may have passed through more than one route. In this „geo- historical‟ approach, that deals with the routes to and through modernity in the world; what becomes obvious is that different modernities have had different „others‟ as obstacles or as categories of reference.
Therborn (2010) breaks the myth about linear modernization processes in Europe by analyzing converging and diverging patterns in the continent through three empirical levels: Structural, institutional, and social.
Therborn uses „entangled modernities‟ as an analytical tool to study the phenomenon of modernity. The concept focuses on analysis from different angles, with an open-ended expectation towards variable outcome Therborn talks of this concept as that which came out of a profound dissatisfaction for Eurocentrism and, after the Second World War, North Atlanticist West-centrism of mainstream 19th and 20th century views of the contemporary world and its history.
With the concept of „entangled modernities‟, Therborn seeks to grasp an understanding of events through a wide interdisciplinary grip, relating cultures and social institutions and social conflic The concept also reiterates that modernism doesn‟t mean a break with the past, rather the past continues without a gap.
Therborn states that entanglements will be of use analytically only when disentangled. He distinguishes three kinds of entanglements of modernities: (a) Space of entanglements (including what is intertwined and where is it intertwined); (b) processes producing entanglements; and (c) effects of entangleme While disentangling entanglements, he says, one should proceed with two major analytical perspectives: (a) By looking at institutions; and (b) by looking into people‟s minds or into „enculturations‟ (how people construct meanings).

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8. References

Barrow, Clyde W. Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist. USA: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
Dirlik, Arif. “Global Modernity? Modernity in an Age of Global Capitalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 6 no.3 (2003): 275–292.
Giddens, A. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Eisenstadt, S.N. “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus129 no.1 (2000).
Moxey, Keith. „Multiple Modernities: Is Modernity Multiple?‟, which is archived online on URL http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/courses/Multiple-Modernities/moxey-essay.html
Therborn, Göran. European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945-2000, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1995.
Therborn, Göran. “Entangled Modernities.” European Journal of Social Theory 6 no.3 (2003): 293–305. Therborn, Göran and Stefan Immerfall. Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century. UK: Springer, 2010.