Module 1

Key Questions
● Based on our personal experiences, what does it mean to be "modern" ?
● In what ways do we express and embody "modernity" in everyday life?

Participation Guide
1. Knauf
● According to Knauf, to be modern is to embrace cultural features that fit the ideology of
modernity and leave behind old ways of life that conflict with the modern one.
● Modernity in relation to education:
○ Education being accessible for the ruling class and clergy for the purpose of
asserting their authority
○ Education after the enlightenment as a way for people outside the ruling class and
clergy for the purpose of pursuing their ambition (ideology of modernity)
■ Limited to men prior to the rise of feminism but now applies to women
st
○ 1 way I express modernity in relation to education (ambition):
■ By taking up higher education to pursue my dream to be a psychiatrist
nd
○ 2 way I express modernity in relation to education (religion):
■ By reading the Bible and seeking to learn about my Catholic faith through
short video lectures instead of only listening to the clergy
2. Taylor
● Cultural definition of modernity:
○ Compares one point on history to another point in history
○ Relies heavily on specific cultural difference between the two points
● Acultural definition of modernity:
○ Focuses on the changes that occur in a society over time
○ Better able to compare similarities in the process of change in societies over time
as it focuses on what changes have occurred over time as opposed to what the
difference is between two chosen points in time
○ More comprehensive view of modernity as a process than cultural definition

Reading 1
Critically Modern: An Introduction
Bruce M. Knauf

Introduction
● To be modern consists of embracing cultural features that fit the ideology of modernity,
leaving behind those that are backward-looking and traditional
 ● The ideology of modernity is usually associated with the aspirations, programs, and
propaganda of a nation-state where they juxtaposed against notions of national
authenticity and cultural or religious history
● Beyond national improvement, modernity is seen as the continuing desire for a style of
life associated with economic development and Western-style material betterment
● Modernity is closely associated with the construction of self-hood and social or material
endeavors of the modern world
○ This many resist or reinforce the imposition fo Western-style institutions, policies,
and initiatives pursued by state or local governments, businesses, international
corporations, NGOs and development agencies
Inflections of Modernity: A Genealogy (How the idea of modernity came about)
● Modernity is thought to have its roots in the rise and spread of capitalism
● The motivational spirit of capitalism developed from Calvinism and the related branches
of puritanical Christianity during and after the Protestant Reformation which gave rise to
the increasing desire for self-conscious improvement through new forms of knowledge,
actions and understanding
● The increasing desire for self-conscious improvement led to burgeoning belief in
progress economically and politically related to the growth of industrial capitalism at
home and the global intensification of Western colonial exploitation
● Capitalism dramatically transformed life in European towns and cities, displacing local
communities of peasants, artisans, landowners and clergy
● Nation states began using new types of knowledge and forms of knowledge to stigmatize,
discipline and punish their subjects in the name of improving society
● It was there that modern notions of selfhood, often been associated with an affirmation of
ordinary life, a secular or instrumentalist orientation, and a heightened sense of
autonomous individuality, self-fashioning and inwardness, arose

Classic Social Theory (Classic Social Theory vs Modern Anthropology)

● Classic social theorists include Marx, Durkheim, Simmel and Weber
● They critically analyzed the present of their day against the possibilities of the future and
the lost benefits of the past, and view modern Western society as an engine of economic
inequality and oppression, a specialized division of labor threatened by alienation, an
arena for monetary dehumanization, or an iron cage of bureaucracy and rationalization
● They believed modern society has powerful potential for more efficient organization,
technological progress and moral or humanistic improvement, and their insights continue
to provide important perspective for understanding more recent developments
● Their work emphasized a close and interactive relation between the subjective features
of culture and the objective features of politics and economy
● During the succeeding decades of the 20th century, the disciplinary interests of the social
sciences and humanities became increasingly specialized and atomized, leading to a
 widening split between models of social change based on economic or political
determinism, and beliefs and cultural values
● This led to the increasing emphasis on modernity in recent years in an attempt to
recombine economic or political determination, and beliefs and cultural values in the
study of contemporary social and cultural change
From POMO to MO (The Fall of Modernism; The Rise and Fall of Postmodernism; The Rise of
Modernism)
● In the 70s and 80s, the split between the social sciences and humanities led to a new
transdisciplinary movement: postmodernism
● Postmodernism came about due economic stagnation and institutional; rigidity that
plagued Western capitalism during the 70s
● There was growing dissatisfaction with European modernity which had disrupted,
impoverished, and killed many, produced two world wars, caused racism, and crushed
colonialism which caused violent decolonization and then neo colonial domination
through postcolonial capitalism which led to diverse world areas undercutting subsistence
production for strictures of a market economy-made Western modernity highly suspect as
a model for general improvement and world progress
● As such, postmodern perspectives drew on French deconstruction, poststructuralism,
surrealism, the literary and artistic avant-garde, and pop culture to deconstruct master
narratives of understanding and grand theories of development and progress
● This led to the rise of movements such as third-wave feminism, subaltern studies, cultural
studies, black cultural criticism and queer theory which challenged Western assumptions
on gender, sex, race, ethnicity and nationalism
● By the late 80s, postmodernism became a point of rupture, refusal and disconnection
from rational or historical understanding
● Proponents of post modernism include Baudrillard, Jameson, Spivak, Butler, Kellner,
Featherstone and the early Lyotard, while an influential opponent of postmodernism
includes Habermas, the arch philosophical champion of contemporary Western
modernity; they were all strongly influenced by Marxism
● Habermas was committed to maintaining reason and rational discourse in contemporary
society and reanalyzed the use of reason in the works of Weber, Lukács, Adorno, Mead,
Durkheim and Parsons, believing that modernity is the positive fruit of rational discourse
bequeathed from the European Enlightenment; in the process, he developed a theoretical
model of communicative action that critiqued functionalist reason and promoted rational
discourse
● His ideas were considered outmoded by many and he seemed to be adopting an
antiquated model of Western rational superiority
● During the early 90s, postmodernism began to fall out of favor and the excursus of
modernism led many scholars back to the study of "modernity"
 ● Despite this, Habermas is increasingly seen by his acolytes as a classic or anachronistic
apologist for master narratives of rational reason in a world rife with competing standards
of truth and rationality
From Philosophy to Social Theory: The Reemergence of Modernity as a Social and Cultural
Problematic (The Recent Rise of Modernism)
● Two influential scholars on contemporary modernism are Harvey and Giddens, each with
their distinct beliefs about modernism, strengths and drawbacks
● In Harvey's view, high industrial capitalism "Fordism" was brought into global crisis in
the early 70s due to corporal rigidity, difficulties of further expansion and falling profit
margins
● This increased reliance on "flexible accumulation" which goes together with speeding up
and decentralization of transactions and profit-seeking across time and space, including
electronic transmission of ideas, information, and financial transactions
● For Harvey, time-space compression is a diagnostic of the social and cultural
fragmentation if the condition of postmodernity
● However, Harvey's work had shortcomings such as sidelining the economic and political
histories of non-Western peoples, including their engagements and resistances against
capitalism, downplaying the motivating force of cultural values, idioms, and ideologies
● Despite this, his work is influential because it is rich in details and critical in Western
cultural perspective with a wide economic and historical scope, does not sacrifice
evidential regor or strength of argument to be evocative and important, puts the
understanding of contemporary cultural developments squarely back in play with
economic and political factors and appreciates the distinctive nature of urban Western
developments while also contextualizing them with larger historical processes
● His deep appreciation of Marxist thought gives his analysis an important critical edge
even as he strives to understand the dynamics of Western cultural experience
● In Gidden's view, modernity emerged historically through capitalism, industrialism,
surveillance and the growing organization of military power
● In his analysis, people are increasingly uprooted, displaced, engaged in wage labor, and
enmeshed in an ever more complex and differentiated world; stable individual identity
based on affiliation with a physical place has transformed into variable identities across
space
● Modernity disconnects space from place, making Gidden's notion of modernity diffuse,
combining features of economy, politics, social organization and personal identity in a
generalized, schematic, and abstract model
● The drawbacks of his work include his negligence of the importance of cultural and
symbolic influences and the creation of a rigid of historical and cultural divide that has
little articulation between features of non-Western modernity and those ascribed by their
ostensible origin in the West
● Gidden's champions a homogenous view of modernity which is no longer tenable amid
the complexities, differentiations and resistances of a contemporary world
Reading 2
The Two Theories of Modernity
Charles Taylor

Two Theories to Understand the Rise of Modernity (Acultural vs Cultural Understanding)

● There are two ways of understanding the rise of modernity, the acultural and the cultural
understanding
● A cultural theory of modernity is on that characterizes the transformations that have
issued the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture ie. comparing a fixed
period of history to the current one
● An acultural type of theory is one that describes these transformations in terms of some
culture-neutral transformation ie. seeing change from earlier centuries as development, in
which the demise of a traditional society give births to the modern one
● The acultural type of theory is the dominant one over the last two centuries as they
explain modernity in terms of reason such as social transformations
● Modernity is characterized by the loss of the roots for a gain in belief that denies
dependence on history or God
Distortions of the Acultural (The Drawbacks of the Dominance of Acultural Theory)
● Aculutral theories tend to describe transitions in terms of a loss of traditional beliefs and
allegiances, screening out the possibility that Western modernity might be sustained by
its own spiritual vision that is not degenerated simply and inescapably out of the
transition
● There are two major drawbacks of the acultural: it distorts and impoverishes our
understanding of ourselves through misclassification and a too narrow notice
The Attractions of the Acultural
● The motive for the predominance of the Acultural includes the tendency for explanations
to shy away from invoking moral or spiritual factors in favor of harder and more down-
to-earth causes such as the growth of science, individualism, negative freeosn,
instrumental reason and other striking features of the culture of modernity
● However, social changes are must be attributed to human motivations

Investigation: Why is there no fixed meaning for being "modern"?

1. Lack of Fixed Agreed-on Definition Amongst Social Scientists
● Whereas empiricist social scientists often stress the economic and political
determination of modernization and globalization, a range of critical theorists,
broad-based intellectuals and social scientists now emphasize the interactive
importance of cultural and material influences in the development of alternative
modernities.
 ○ Giddens's notion of modernity combines features of economy, politics,
social organization and personal identity in a generalized schematic model
which is criticized for neglecting the importance of cultural and symbolic
influences.

2. Varying Responses of People Around the World Lead to Varying Ideas of the Meaning
of Being Modern
● The divergent responses of the world's people arguably maintain or increase their
cultural diversity at the same time that they become more deeply entwined with
capitalist influences, institutions, and impositions.
● Although people in different world are increasingly share aspirations, material
standards, and social institutions at the same time that their local definition of and
engagement with these initiatives fuels cultural distinctiveness.
● Ideologies of becoming modern are commonly hitched to the aspirations,
programs and propaganda of a nation-state, where they alternatively inform
against notions of national authenticity and cultural or religious history.
● The values that attend modern aspiration interact powerfully with the construction
of selfhood and social or material endeavors in diverse world area; these
processes may alternatively resist or reinforce the imposition of Western-style
institutions, politics and initiatives, as variously pursued by state or local
governments, businesses, international corporations, NGOs, and development
agencies.
● In diverse circumstances across the world, local notions of value, worth and
success articulate with escalating desires for economic development or social
progress to redefine longer-standing practices and orientations. These dynamics
are mediated by cultural history and by economic and political realities of what it
means locally to be developed or experience progress.
● Aspects of modern identity often went together with increasing desire for personal
or collective progress based on new ways of daily living and frequently at the
expense of previous ways of life. These trends intensified and melded with the
powerful growth of industrial capitalism, technological innovation, and increasing
desires for manufactured commodities.
3. People have varying ideas of what being modern means depending on what point of
history they were born in
● The moral values and beliefs that attend modernity are not reducible to dominant
assumptions of economic determinism and its ostensible relation to social and
political "progress."
○ European modernity had disrupted, impoverished and killed so many
people, producing two world wars, racism, crushing colonization, violent
decolonization, and the neocolonial domination through postcolonial
capitalism that undercut subsistence production and made people in
 diverse world areas dependent on the structures of a market economy-
made Western modernity highly suspect as a model for general
improvement and world progress.
○ According to Foucault, Western regimes of truth operated as instruments
of domination and oppression.
○ Postmodernism has led to new understandings of modern life. This is
because the dynamics of modernity - economic, political, and cultural -
were disrupted and thrown into crisis during the 1970s and 1980s to
produce the cultural symptoms associated with postmodernism.
● Individuation came to permeate the social disembeddedness of a modern world.

Participations Guide

3 Reason Why Modernism Has No Fixed Meaning

1. Academic Realm
● Scholars disagrees amongst themselves between the acultural and cultural definitions
● Empiricist social scientists favor acultural definition:
○ Stress the economic and political determination of modernization and
globalization
● Critical theorists, broad-based intellectuals and social scientists favor cultural definition:
○ Stress cultural and material influences in the development of alternative
modernities
● Eg. Giddens's notions of modernity involve a generalized schematic model
○ Criticized for neglecting importance of cultural and symbolic influences
2. Cultural Realm
● Varying local definition of and engagement with material and social aspirations
○ Caused by varying aspirations, programs, propagandas of nation-state and
religious histories
○ Fuels cultural distinctiveness that may or may not oppose Western-style
institutions, politics and initiatives
○ Eg. UAE vs USA
■ UAE: Modernity is defined by economic and technological markers as
opposed to freedom markers
● UAE is a leading tech and innovation hub as it aims to diversify
economy away from oil
● BUT: It is illegal to leave the Islamic faith → punishable by
death
■ USA: Modernity is not only defined by economic and technological
markers but freedom markers
 ● USA prides itself on economic progress with high levels of
productivity, technological innovation and competitiveness, and
the world's largest nominal GDP
● ALSO: Freedom of religion → a constitutionally protected right
(First Amendment)
3. Historical Realm
● Meaning of modern differs across different historical eras
○ European modernity before postmodernism (before the 70s):
■ Focused on technological innovation and hard power
■ Involved two world wars, racism and crushing colonization
○ Current modernity
■ Focuses more on soft power and individualism due to postmodernism
■ Involves condemning the old definition as a regime of truth that fosters
domination and oppression