22 Multiple Modernities: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Peter Wagner

Amrita Dutta and Dev Pathak

epgp books

 

1. Introduction

 

Defining and re-defining „modernity‟ has been one of the oldest tasks of social science. While most of the social scientists have remained equivocal that modernity is co-temporal with Enlightenment and concomitantly espouses the spirit of rationality and science; a whole range of debate began and still continues regarding the journey of modernity from the „West‟ to other parts of the world; and the potentiality of change and adaptation thereby. The recognition that modernity is no longer a monopoly of Europe and has travelled to all other parts of the world has triggered a range of arguments and counter-arguments to decipher modernity in all its novelty. Both Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt and Peter Wagner, whom we will study in this chapter in detail, acknowledge the transformation of modernity from the classical understanding to the present societal conditioning; however, each of them reaches that conclusion differently. It is interesting to study these two scholars and their take on modernity together, as each of them represents distinctly different ethnic locations, Israel and Germany, respectively. Nevertheless, their understanding of diversification within modernity bears certain commonalities and few stark differences.

 

2. About the Authors 

 

Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt was an eminent social scientist from Israel. He was appointed a teaching position at department of Sociology, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he became Professor Emeritus in 1990, and remained till death in September, 2010. During his academic life, he held innumerable guest professorships all over the world, including at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, University of Zurich, University of Vienna and University of Heidelberg. His idea of multiple modernities, among others, is one of the most debated and discussed concept of the modern time. For his intellectual contribution to the world of sociology, Eisenstadt received several prizes like Max-Planck Research Prize and Holberg International Memorial prize.

 

Peter Wagner, a German social scientist focuses on social theory and political philosophy of contemporary Europe. His writings are influenced by Eric Hobsbawm‟s understanding of industrial capitalism. Wagner‟s take on modernity revolves around the relevance of history in terms of assessing the type of a particular society. He has conducted comparative studies on history of social sciences, trying to formulate on sociology of modernity. He is a former Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute, Florence, and a Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and an ICREA Research Professor at University of Barcelona.

 

3. Main Theories 

 

Here, we would start with Eisenstadt’s understanding of „multiple modernities‟ and go on to Wagner thereafter.

 

Eisenstadt‟s significance as a social scientist lies in his concept of „multiple modernities‟. The notion of multiple modernities views the contemporary world and the history of modern era in a certain fashion that goes against the views long prevalent in scholarly and general discourse. It is at tandem with the classical theorists including Marx, Durkheim and even Weber. They all assumed that modernity would lead to identical developments all over the world in the spheres of society, economy, polity and culture. However, that did not happen. The actual developments in modernizing societies defied this homogeneous, hegemonic assumption of the West. While a general trend towards structural differentiation developed across a wide range of institutions in most of the societies, the ways in which these institutions eventually pronounced themselves giving rise to multiple ideological patterns – have made them distinctive from each other. However, these patterns did not constitute simple continuation in the modern era of the traditions of their respective societies (Eisenstadt 2000). They were distinctively modern, but with each of their historical and cultural specificities. They developed distinctly modern dynamics and modes of interpretation, of which the Western model remained the reference point. In fact, many of the movements developing in the non-Western part of the world had stark anti-modern and anti-Western themes, yet they have been quite modern in their features. This is not just true for the traditionalist and nationalist movements during and immediately after WWII, but the recent fundamentalist movements as well.

 

3.1  What is ‘Multiple Modernities’? 

 

According to Eisenstadt, the concept of multiple modernities presumes that to understand the history of the contemporary world and that of modernity, it is important to see each society as a story of continuous constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs. These ongoing reconstructions of multiple institutional and ideological patterns are carried forward by specific social actors in close connection with social, political and intellectual activists, and also by social movements pursuing different programs of modernity, holding very different views on what makes societies modern. Through the engagement of these actors with broader sectors of their respective societies, unique expressions of modernities are realized. These activities have not been confined to any single society or state, although certain societies and states proved to major arenas social activists were able to implement their programs and pursue their goals. Though distinct understandings of multiple modernities developed in nation-states, and within different ethnic and cultural groupings, each was in many respects international.

 

3.2 The Common Core of Modernity World-wide 

 

One of the most significant features of multiple modernities is that modernity and Westernization are not the same; Western pattern of modernity, though enjoying precedence over all other kinds of modernities, is not the only way to go modern. Here the relevant issue is to address what constitutes „modern‟; what is the common core of „modernity‟? The problem is exacerbated with the contemporary deconstruction of the contemporary „classical‟ models of the nation and revolutionary states, particularly as a consequence of globalization. Contemporary discourse has raised possibility that the modern project is somewhat exhausted. One contemporary view holds that the exhaustion is manifested in the „end of history‟ and the other being Huntington‟s notion of a „clash of civilizations‟, in which Western civilization is confronted by a world in which traditional, fundamentalist, anti- modern and anti-Western civilizations are predominant.

 

The cultural and political program of modernity entailed certain ideological and institutional premises. Weber found the existential threshold of modernity at that moment when the unquestioned legitimacy of a divinely preordained social order begun its decline. Modernity emerges only when what has been seen as an unquestionable postulate regarding the unchanging cosmos starts degenerating. Counter- moderns rejects this approach believing that what is unchanging is not the social order, but the task that the construction and functioning of any social order must address. From this, two theses can be extracted: firstly, that modernities in all their varieties are responses to the same existential problematic; and secondly, modernities in all their varieties are precisely those responses that leave the problematic in question intact, that formulate visions of life and practice neither beyond nor in denial of it, but rather within it, even in deference to it.

 

The degree of reflexivity characteristic of modernity gave rise to an awareness of the possibility of multiple visions subject to contestation. In this regard, mention should be made of Daniel Lerner, who recognized that being modern includes the awareness of the multiplicity of roles existing beyond narrow, fixed, local and familial ones; and of Alex Inkeles, who acknowledged the possibility of belonging to wider trans-local and changing communities. Central to theses has been the notion of autonomy of humans from fetters of traditional political and cultural authority. Such theses gave rise to the possibility of societies actively formed by conscious human activity, coupled with legitimacy of multiple individual and group-oriented goals and interests as a consequence of multiple interpretations of the common good.

 

From ideological and political program of modernity emerged three postulates central to modern political processes: the restructuring of centre-periphery relations as the principal focus of political dynamics in modern society; a strong tendency toward politicizing the demands of various sectors of society and the conflicts between them; and a continuing struggle over the definition of the realm of the political.

 

3.3 Modernity beyond the West 

 

According to Eisenstadt, modernity moved beyond the West into different Asian societies – Japan, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia – to the Middle Eastern countries, coming finally to Africa. By the end of 20th century, it encompassed virtually the entire world, the first true wave of globalization. All these societies adopted the basic model of nation-state and that of basic symbols of Western modernity, modern institutions like administrative and legal. However, at the same time, the encounter of modernity with the non- Western societies brought about far-reaching transformations in the premises, symbols and institutions of modernity – with new problems arising as a consequence.

 

The attraction of many of modernity‟s themes and institutional forms for many groups in these societies was caused first by the fact that it was the European (and Western) pattern, developed and spread throughout the world by western economic, technological and military expansions that undermined the cultural premises and institutional cores of these ancient societies. The appropriation of these themes and institutions permitted many in non-Western societies to be part of the new modern universal tradition while selectively rejecting many of its aspects; most notably that which took for granted the hegemony of the Western formulations of the cultural program of modernity. The appropriation of themes of modernity made it possible for such groups to include some of the Western universal principles of modernity in the construction of their own collective identities without necessarily giving up specific components of their traditional identities. Nor did it abolish their negative or ambivalent attitudes towards the West.  Modernity‟s characteristic themes of protest, institution-building, and the redefinition of centre and periphery served to encourage and accelerate transportation of the modern project to non-European and non-Western settings. Although initially couched in Western terms, many of these themes found resonance in the political traditions of many of these societies.

 

Political and cultural transformations of these societies, anchored in the universalistic principles of European and Western modernity, shaped each of them by the combined impact of their respective historical traditions and the different ways in which they became incorporated into the new modern world system. In this regard, Sudipta Kaviraj has analyzed the impact of Indian political traditions and of the colonial imperial experience in shaping the distinctive features of modernity as they surfaced in the country. Similar analyses of China or Vietnam would indicate the specific modes allowing for„alternative‟, revolutionary universalistic notions of the modern program of modernity to spring forth from their civilizational context.

 

3.4 From Unchallenged Existence of Nation-states to New Social Movements World-wide 

 

The defining premise of modernity lies in its absolute faith in the concept and unchangeable continuity of nation-state. However, this absolutism has met with severe challenges over the years, especially with globalization. It is mainly the emerging alteration and inner dynamic manifested within nation-states worldwide has strengthened the idea of the possibility of multiple modernities.

 

Institutional, symbolic and ideological dimensions of the modern national and revolutionary states, once considered as the epitome of modernity, have changed dramatically within the latest context of globalization – economic, cultural and ideological. These trends, manifested especially in the growing autonomy of world financial and commercial flows, intensified international migrations, and concomitant development on an international scale of such social problems as the spread of diseases, prostitution, organized crime and youth violence. All these have come to reduce the control of the nation-states on their own political and economic affairs; nation-states have also lost a part of their monopoly on internal and international violence. The process of globalization is also evident in the cultural sphere with the hegemonic expansion of cultural programs and visions.

 

The ideological and symbolic centrality of the concept of nation-state has weakened and new political and civilizational visions and new forms of collective identity are being developed. These pioneering visions and identities have been proclaimed by a variety of new social movements, all of which, however different, have challenged the premises of the classical modern nation and its program of modernity, which hitherto remained the unchallenged domain of political and cultural thinking.

 

Women‟s movements and ecological movements were the first of such kind e.g. anti-Vietnam War movements in 1960s and 1970s. Such movements brought a shift in the nature of movements going on so far; they shifted the focus from the states to more localized scopes and agenda. Instead of focussing on the reconstitution of the nation-state, these movements promulgated a cultural politics or a politics of identity couched as multiculturalism, oriented toward the construction of new autonomous social, political and cultural spaces. Fundamentalist movements within Muslim, Jewish and Christian protestant communities, and „ethnic‟ movements witnessed initially in the former republics of the Soviet Union, has emerged in many parts of the world in contemporary period.

 

In these and many other settings, new types of collective identities are emerging, going beyond the immediate logic of the nation-state. Many of these hitherto „subdued‟ identities, ethnic, local, regional and transnational, contest the hegemony of the older homogenizing programs, claiming their autonomous space in the central institutional arenas. These new paradigm of contestations and predominance of the local has given rise to a certain decomposition of the compact image of „civilized man‟, connected with the emergence and spread of the original program of modernity.

 

Coming to Wagner, his understanding of modernity cannot begin without a short discussion on his critique of Eisenstadt‟s concept of „multiple modernities‟ and why, according to Wagner, the concept is inadequate for the contemporary world.

 

3.5 Inadequacy in ‘Multiple Modernities’ 

 

The analysis of already existing multiple forms of modernity is the major challenge to current social and political theory and comparative-historical and political sociology. It requires a conceptual and empirical analysis of that which is common to different forms of modernity and that which varies between them. Furthermore, it demands an analysis as to why particular forms of modernity developed in specific societal settings. Eisenstadt explained the persistent plurality of modernity through „cultural programmes‟, thus introducing an interpretative approach. This approach has been widely received and recognized; however, it has failed to make the innovative impact that one could have expected.

 

This relative failure is, as Wagner suggests due to two weaknesses. Firstly, the strong idea of „cultural programme‟ suggests considerable stability of any given form of modernity. Indeed, many contributors to the debate now reason in terms of civilizations, and „classical‟ civilizations like the Chinese, Japanese or also the Indian one have been key objects for the identification of multiple modernities. As a consequence, considerable limitations to the applicability of the approach are introduced, as it is difficult to conceive of, say, South Africa, Brazil or even Russia, the USA or Australia in terms of deep-rooted, rather stable cultural programmes that merely unfold in the encounter with novel situations (Wagner 2001). Secondly, the approach is based on only two main concepts: the characteristic features of modernity, on the one hand, and the cultural programs, on the other. This dichotomy limits the possibility of comparison since all difference between modernities needs to be explained in terms of the specific underlying program.

 

Against the background of these deficiencies of the multiple modernities debate, the requirements for true innovation in the comparative sociology of contemporary societies and their historical trajectories stand out. For most current cases, the self-understanding of societies has not been stable for centuries but has undergone significant transformations. Thus, there is no underlying cultural program but rather an ongoing process of interpretation of one‟s situation in the light of crucial experiences made in earlier situations. Moreover, rather than separating „culture‟ from the institutional girders of modernity, one needs to demonstrate if and how re-interpretations of a society‟s self-understanding have an impact on institutional change; in other words, how cultural-interpretative transformations are related to socio-political transformations.

 

3.6 Modernity or Modernities? 

 

Sociologists have long tended to theorize contemporary Western societies as „modern societies‟. One can even take it to be the founding assumption of sociology that there was a rupture with earlier modes of social organization by which societies were put on an entirely different footing. The Reformation and the scientific, industrial, and democratic revolutions are the major points of reference, even though the precise date is debatable. Importantly, this thinking went with the additional assumption which often remained implicit, but was sometimes spelt out that there could be no further major social transformation. However, it can be observed sociologically, that there have been further transformations. In that light, the major questions remain: Was there a major social transformation? If so, to what new societal configuration(s) has it led? And what do these considerations entail for our understanding of „modernity‟ and „modern societ‟’?

 

Under Parsonian review,  the USA and some West  European societies  had reached the stage of „advanced industrial society‟ or „modern society‟. Other societies still had to undergo modernization and development, leading up to where the more advanced societies already are. Major upheavals or ruptures were not envisaged, and all societies had basically embarked on the same historical path. The power of this interpretation, as exemplified in Parsons’s work, stemmed not least from the fact that it managed to combine a broad empirical-historical observation on institutional stability in the West with two explanatory elements, which in their combination appeared unbeatable.

 

However, as stable as this double affirmative and critical image of contemporary Western societies still appeared by the mid-1960s, objections to it began to accumulate.

 

1. First, historical sociologists were able to demonstrate that theorists of modern society had neglected historical information or downplayed its significance to an utterly unacceptable degree to arrive at their story of smooth and linear development.

 

2. Second, events in Western societies themselves led to doubts about the inherent and unshakable solidity of those social orders. On the one hand, the protest movements of the 1960s certainly did not achieve the major political revolution some of their protagonists were hoping for. But the significant cultural transformations of the ensuing decades, most prominently a new understanding of selfhood, sometimes called „new individualism‟, are often traced to this period. On the other hand, the similarly unexpected economic crisis of the early 1970s led to a questioning of the sustainability of the post-war economic model. Standardized mass production was accompanied by growing mass consumption patterns and a mode of government regulation of the economy that mechanically protected capitalist expansion by fiscal and monetary policies. This model seemed to allow for projections of stable economic growth that stretched far into the future. As of 1975, those projections were no longer even worth the paper on which they were printed (Wagner 2001). It is not only that crises and recessions recurred; economists and economic sociologists also detected increasing signs of the transformation of the economy away from mass production toward „flexible specialization‟, and away from nationally controllable economic flows toward „globalization‟.

 

3. Third, the observation with regard to changing composition of the workforce, started to demand revisions of the prevailing sociological image of society. The first major response came to be known as the idea of a transition from „industrial society‟ to „post-industrial society‟. This transition was characterized by a shift from industry to the service sector as the major employer and to scientific-technical knowledge as the major productive force. Although this new theory of post-industrial society initially tried to match its predecessor in terms of explanatory tools and precision, it never achieved the same coherence. Some of its proponents, such as Alain Touraine (1969), even made it a key point that post-industrial society is perpetually changed by the activity of social movements. According to him, it was imperative that sociological analysis changed in tandem with social change.

 

3.6  ‘Extended Liberal Modernity’ 

 

Modern society ‟of the 1950s was characterized by a high standardization, even institutionalization, of the life course, not least due to state regulation in conjunction with economic rationalization. During the 1970s and 1980s, those „highly standardized life trajectories have been “shattered” by structural and cultural developments in all major social institutions‟. And such „transformation of the life course regime‟ can be connected to the emergence of „the formation of a highly individualistic, transient, and fluid identity‟, which is increasingly observed in Western societies. The changes since the 1960s can then broadly be interpreted as a weakening of the grip of those institutions on human beings, or, vice versa, as a liberation of human beings from the institutionally suggested standards of behaviour. However, more needs to be said about the nature of the transformation and its impact on the overall societal arrangement. Much of current sociological observation converges on this weakening of the institutional grip on human beings, a process called „individualization‟, and a simultaneous   weakening   of   the   coherence   of   nation-and   state-bound   institutions,   called „globalization‟. Both of these terms have created more confusion than clarification. Taken together, they tend to suggest that social phenomena „in between‟ human beings and the world are disappearing. This, however, is a claim that can hardly be empirically supported. The earlier overemphasis on a coherent social system within the boundaries of a state-bound society finds here its counterpart in a conceptual overreaction in the opposite direction. Significantly, such conceptualization of the transformation continues to carry implicit assumptions about the driving forces of social change.

 

Like in the earlier period, different theoretical attitudes toward the new situation can be distinguished. The affirmative theory of industrial society has been succeeded by „neo-modernization‟ theories, which see individualization as a new expression of the emancipatory promise of modernity. The critical position now considers, in the overemphasis on the individual, the risk of a breakdown of social order. In older terminology, such a view would have been called conservative. Nowadays, however, it is often known as communitarianism, and it includes many authors who would not want to see themselves as conservatives. A third position, now also associated with the political slogan of the „third way‟, recognizes the risks of the loss of „ontological security‟ (Anthony Giddens), but finds in the increase of reflexive monitoring of social arrangements also a possible remedy. Accordingly, the approach has become known as theorizing on „reflexive modernization‟ (Beck, 1994).

 

All three positions have one problematic feature in common. They all claim to understand what the ground-rules of the new societal configuration are. Each tries to re-establish intellectual hegemony and, as a consequence, epistemic certainty. In this sense, they mirror the intellectual constellation before the social transformation and they refuse the insight from the experience of the transformation that the ways to sociologically analyse contemporary society may also have to undergo a reflexive turn. Such reflection on sociological knowledge needs to address the demise of organized modernity and the rise of an „extended liberal modernity‟. This kind of modernity no longer needs to rely on the channelization of human desires for the expression of interests and the realization of selfhood into pre-organized forms. Wagner here brings in his concept of „problematique‟ to further explain the idea of „extended liberal modernity‟.

 

3.7  Modernity as a ‘Problematique’ 

 

In terms of the analysis of entire societal configurations, discussions on two functional sub-systems is crucial – globalization and individualization. Globalization sees modernity far too unequivocally as based on the pillars of an empirical-analytic approach to knowledge, a market organization of the economy, and plural democracy as its political form. It disregards or underestimates the variety of situations and experiences hidden behind those formulae and forecloses the possibility for sociology to grasp that variety. On the other hand, individualization far too often assumes that the increasing density of relations of communication and transport necessarily leads to the overall convergence of societies. In addition, its theoretical emptying of the space between the individual and the globe imposes on singular human beings the burden of continually creating and recreating their relevant connections to others. Thus, it disregards the capacity of „institutions‟ to provide relief from the need to act, or at least to guide action. Moreover, its scepticism toward collective concepts is matched by a reverse faith in the individual human being, in theoretical, normative, and empirical terms. It can hardly do other than lead into a view of the world shaped by individualist-rationalist social theorizing and then realized by neoliberal policy design. In the former, there is an a priori formula for the set of modern social institutions; in the latter, the rationalist-individualist one, there are no social institutions at all.

 

Under conditions of modernity, there is always a range of possibilities, even if some are unlikely. But if the history of modernity reveals both plurality and possibility, can there be a theorizing that captures all the present and past diversity as well as the possibilities that are open to the future? The view held here is that the historicity of modernity requires the development of modes of theorizing that are adequate to the variety of modernities and to the problematiques that the modern condition poses for social life. In other words, socio-political modernity is constitutively characterized by problematiques that remain open, not by specific solutions to given problems. Among those problematiques we find, in particular, the search for certain knowledge and truth, the building of a viable and good political order, the issue of the continuity of the acting person, and ways of relating in the lived present to time past and time future.

 

These problematiques co-emerge with modernity, and they can neither be rejected nor be handled once and for all by finding their  „modern‟ solution. Societies that accept the double imaginary signification of modernity are destined to search for answers to these questions and to institute those answers. But those answers can always again be challenged, and then new ways of dealing with those problematiques have to be elaborated. Hobsbawm’s „most dramatic‟ transformation was such a transformative crisis of modernity. What the sociology of the contemporary world needs to take from this experience is that the constitutive problematiques of modernity will tend to re-emerge and they will always have to be interpreted in their concrete temporality, at their specific historical location.

 

4. Criticisms 

 

Both Eisenstadt and Wagner have been termed as falling short of explaining the rapid change of socio-political situation at a global level with their concepts of multiple modernities and extended liberal modernity. The term „multiple modernities‟ has faced both critical acclaims and criticisms from sociological fraternity; some suggest that the multiple modernities approach is ill-equipped to address the revolutionary shift to the modern age, tracing, as it does, the presumably more profound differences between civilizations to the Axial Age some 2,500 years ago, whose religious, epistemic and cultural transformations are believed to transcend the modern and pre-modern eras and hence go deeper, to have a more significant and lasting impact on contemporary societies‟ identity than their lesser or greater degrees of modernization. In that light, according to some scholars, the term multiple modernities needs to be replaced with „varieties of modernity‟. Varieties of modernity would go beyond the realm of culture and politics, the two most significant terrains of multiple modernities discourse. It would rather explore the society in its entirety, all aspects of modern life and all institutional sectors differentiated out of embeddeddness in the religiously sanctioned moral economy and the stratification-based social order of the pre-modern past.

 

The notion of multiple modernities suggests homogeneity within civilizations; however, the notion of varieties of modernity raises doubts as to the authenticity of such propositions. To be able to speak of varieties of modernity, one needs to find clusters of modern societies with coherent patterns of institutional co-variation, such that a particular type of modernity that scored high on one variable of institutional design would also have to score high on another and vice versa, resulting into what Weber called „elective affinities‟ among different sets of institutions. The modern-ness of the modern societies would first have to be determined by their conformity with a number of criteria qualifying modernity (Schmidt 2006).

 

5.  Conclusion 

 

The notion of „multiple modernities‟ attest to the decomposition of the major structural characteristics and weakening of the once-powerful hegemony of the nation-state; however do they really represent the „end of history‟ and that of classical modern program altogether? According to Eisenstadt, the process of globalization in the contemporary era neither imply an end of history or a clash of civilizations engaging a secular West in confrontation with societies that appear to deny the program of modernity. They do not even constitute a return to the problems of pre-modern axial civilizations; rather the trends of globalization show nothing so clearly as the continual re-interpretation of the cultural program of modernity, the construction of multiple modernities, attempts by various groups and movements to re-appropriate and re-define the discourse of modernity in their own new term. At the same time, they are re-inventing major spaces of deliberation and contestation in which new forms of modernity are shaped, away from the classical scope of the nation-state and closer to the cross-road of different movements and societal shifts.

 

Not only do multiple modernities continue to emerge going beyond the premises of the nation-states, but within all societies, new questions and different interpretations of modernity are emerging. Development of multiple modernities not only denotes a break from the classical notion of European and Western modernity but strengthens the „de-Westernization‟ of modernity. To explain the notion of multiplicity and variations within modernity, the distinction of these problématiques marks a first step towards the disentangling of societal features that then can be systematically compared. In brief, the fact that societies need to effectively address these problématiques by searching for their own answers is what is common among all „modernities‟:

 

The epistemic problématique interrogates first of all the degree of certainty of knowledge human beings can attain with regard to themselves, to their social life, and to nature. Translating this issue into socio-political matters, it further raises the question to what degree such knowledge can or should be used to determine socio-political issues. Given that answers to both of the preceding questions can be contested under conditions of modernity, thirdly, one needs to ask in how far claims to certain knowledge, in comprehensive world-views, can be made collectively binding in any given society?

 

This last question directly links the epistemic to the political problématique. The central issue of the latter concerns the relation between those matters that should/need to be dealt with in common and those others that should/can be left to individual self-determination. Modernity‟s basic commitment to autonomy leaves the relation between individual autonomy (freedom from constraint, or freedom from domination) and collective autonomy (democracy) rather widely open to interpretation. Despite occasional claims to the contrary, modern political theory has not provided a single and unique answer; thus, there is plurality of interpretations. More specifically, the political problématique also concerns the extension and mode of participation in political decision-making (the question of citizenship) as well as the mode of aggregation in the process of collective will-formation (the question of representation).

 

The centre of the economic problématique is the question as to how to best satisfy human material needs, and it can be alternatively answered in terms of productive efficiency and in terms of congruence with societal values and norms. Among the latter, the commitment to individual freedom may rank highly, in which case freedom of commerce will be considered an, at least partially, appropriate institutional solution.

 

In all its brevity, these reflections should have demonstrated: that there is a plurality of possible ways of responding to these basic problématiques, even under conditions of modernity; that, further to their internal openness to contestation and interpretation, the responses to these problématiques can be articulated in different ways; that the need to articulate individual and collective autonomy is a thread common to all problématiques, and it is central to the political one.

 

Therefore, both Eisenstadt and Wagner recognize the existence of multiplicity of modernities. However, Eisenstadt contextualizes modernity and its variations in terms of nation-states; as modernity adapts to the socio-cultural response of a particular country, concept of nation-state get challenged at the face of local identities and ethnic movements. On the other hand, Wagner puts more faith in the history of each of the societies and presupposes the significance of economic structure of society to determine its nature of modernity. He centres his understanding of the changeable nature of modernity within the context of capitalism and industrialization, and considers globalization and individualization more analogous to the modern plurality than Eisenstadt who terms them as modern sub-systems. Nevertheless, two both of them stand for the latest arguments on modernity, its journey world-wide, and the concomitant plurality so involved.

 

6. Summary 

 

The following points of importance can be gathered from this chapter:

  • Both Eisenstadt and Wagner argue that the classical view on modernity, based on the understanding of the Western scholars namely Marx, Weber and Durkheim, is not applicable to all modernizing societies, and that it needs to be substantiated by a notion of multiplicity.
  • The modernization process, as he continues, needs to be understood as the negotiation of multiple societal stakeholders about what makes society modern rather than as a historical consequence.
  • At the same time, the intensification of globalization began to increasingly detach the concept of modernity from the entity of the nation-state that increasingly forfeit control over hitherto internal affairs which allows for transnational visions of collective identities that contested modernity on the ground of the nation-state. Without aiming at the core of society, new social movements are continually dissociating the concept of modernity from the West.
  • According  to  them,  modernity  in  its  multiple  dimensions  is  a  continual  mechanism  of  re- appropriations and reinterpretations of the idea of modernity.
  • The idea of liberty as autonomy was fundamental to modernity. Historically, however, the social context of the emergence of modernity provided material out of which boundaries for self-rule would be formed, for good reasons maybe but without sustainable universal criteria.
  • The present condition of modernity can be characterized by a rapid erosion of these boundaries, laying bare the absence of criteria. Issues ranging from abortion and genetic engineering to migration, citizenship and social rights, to the redefinition of polities in Western Europe and in the formerly socialist countries are a current focus of uncertainties and anxieties. These springs directly from the basic belief that human beings under modern conditions are not only enabled, but obliged to self-create their rules of life.
you can view video on Multiple Modernities: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Peter Wagner

7. References

  1. Baumann, G.P., Einstadt, Shmuel. “Multiple Modernities”, Transaction Publications, Vol. 1:29 (2000), on URL http://theorycloud.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/gerrit-phil-baumann-southeast-asian- studies-university-of-passau-summary-eisenstadt.pdf
  2. Eisenstadt, S.N., “Multiple Modernities” Daedalus   129,   no.1   (Winter,   2000)   on   URL http://www.havenscenter.org/files/Eisenstadt2000_MultipleModernities.pdf
  3. Preyer,  G.,  “The  Paradigm  of  Multiple  Modernities”,  Protosociology,  no.  24  (2007)  on  URL http://www.protosociology.de/Download/ProtoSociology-Vol24-Introduction.pdf
  4. Schmidt, V., “Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity”? Current Sociology, no. 54( 2006), , Issue 77 on URL http://pagines.uab.cat/seangolden/sites/pagines.uab.cat.seangolden/files/VolKer_H_Schmidt_Multiple_Modernities_or_Varieties_of_Modernity.pdf
  5. Wagner, Peter, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline, 2001, Routledge, London on URL http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2012/SOC403/um/Wagner_A_Sociology_of_Modernity Liberty_and_ Discipline.pdf
  6. Wagner, Peter, Multiple Trajectories of Modernity: Why Social Theory needs Historical Sociology, Thesis Eleven, no. 100, 53 (2010), on URL http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1258095.files/Wagner%20on%20Modernity.pdf
  7. Wagner, Peter, Modernity: One or Many? The Balckwell Companion to Sociology, 2004, Blackwell Publications, Australia on URL http://philosociology.com/UPLOADS/_PHILOSOCIOLOGY.ir_The%20Blackwell%20Companion% 20to%20Sociology%20by%20Blau_621%20pgs.pdf#page=51 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvVcR8ImA8).