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The era of enlightenment is known as "mother of modernityâ€. It has promoted human rationality, scientific development, and human supremacy and paves the way for the decline of religious understanding of the society. The rise of human rationality, materialization of industry, invention of printing press and rising trend of democratic principle, emerging market economy and technological development are characterised as modernity. The idea of modernity is first stage of human era where human beings were treated as supreme authority of their spheres. With modernity, the concept of nation/state emerged which has the credit to organise the world, promote the rights of the individuals and pay its emphasis on the construction of the democratic society, participatory politics and free individuals. But modernity is criticised by scholars like Perry Anderson, who argue that modernity has actually created another layer and made society absolute. It has inserted empirical documentation and rejected the persons' observation, including local reality. With these critiques, post-modernity emerged which has questioned the foundation of modernity. It advocated for 'bottom to approach' unlike modernity. The main objective of this paper to analysed the main tenets of modernity and discuss the actual principle of post-modernity. This analytical paper concludes with the major critics of post-modernity by taking the author's understanding about modernity and post-modernity.

We live in a modern age, but what does 'modern' mean and how can a reflection on 'modernity' help us to understand the world today? These are the questions that Peter Wagner sets out to answer in this concise and accessible book. Wagner begins by returning to the question of modernity's Western origins and its claims to open up a new and better era in the history of humanity. Modernity's claims and expectations have become more prevalent and widely shared, but in the course of their realization and diffusion they have also been radically transformed. In an acute and engaging analysis, Wagner examines the following key issues among others: - Modernity was based on the hope for freedom and reason, but it created the institutions of contemporary capitalism and democracy. How does the freedom of the citizen relate to the freedom of the buyer and seller today? And what does disaffection with capitalism and democracy entail for the sustainability of modernity? - Rather than a single model of modernity, there is now a plurality of forms of modern socio-political organisation. What does this entail for our idea of progress and our hope that the future world can be better than the present one? - All nuance and broadening notwithstanding, our concept of modernity is in some way inextricably tied to the history of Europe and the West. How can we compare different forms of modernity in a 'symmetric', non-biased or non-Eurocentric way? How can we develop a world-sociology of modernity?

This book analyses the impact of the Western idea of 'modernity' on development and underdevelopment in Africa. It traces the genealogy of the Western idea of modernity from European Enlightenment concepts of the universal nature of human history and development, and shows how this idea was used to justify the Western exploitation and oppression of Africa. It argues that contemporary development, theory and practice is a continuation of the Enlightenment project and that Africa can only achieve real development by rejecting Western modernity and inventing its own forms of modernity. The book i.

Douglass reviews 'Political Theory, Modernity and Post-Modernity' by N. J. Rengger.

Examines the defining characteristics of culture & morality regarding modernity. In the premodern era, institutions & culturally powerful individuals defined the standards & distinctions of healthy/unhealthy & refined/unrefined culture. However, cultural processing became more ambiguous in the early modern era, & early moderns (in the name of freedom) attempted to eliminate the boundary between healthy & unhealthy culture, while maintaining the distinction between high & low culture. However, it is argued that all distinctions have disappeared in recent decades, & modern culture is defined as omnivorous. Whereas culture was previously depicted as eternal & immortal, modernity defines culture as a collection of subjective, individual, & finite perspectives; modern culture is mortal & historically dependent. However, it is suggested that modern conceptions of morality are grounded in transcendent visions of goodness, & morality is thereby eternal & distinct from history. Therefore, modernity is characterized by the social negotiation of the eternal & finite, or cultural & moral. T. Sevier

'Modernity' originally meant Euromodernity, and only now are historians freeing themselves from Eurocentric perspective, adopting a new periodisation under the rubric of 'globalisation'. The belief in 'Progress', associated with secularisation and advancing science and technology, underlies Western imperialism. This in turn fuels the imposition of 'Modernity' upon all other countries in the world, and challenges them to adopt it or remain inferior – and often humiliated. Brief discussions follow of case studies of the largely successful adoption of 'Modernity' by Japan, China and Turkey, and its substantial rejection in the Arab Middle East. There, since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 'modernity' and its attributes have always been tainted by associated with humiliation and loss of honour and dignity. The Islamic rejection of 'Modernity', entailing weak state power, created a void into which global 'Jihadism' stepped. The exaggerated response to it, in Bush's 'War on Terror', has led in the direction of the national security state and a threat to the core principles of American democracy.

The article discusses the concept of multiple and entangled modernity that is proposed instead of universal Western-type modernity that is criticized by the modernity discourse. We argue that the concept of multiple modernity is broadened by the concept of entangled modernity. The latter explains the multiplicity of modernities and the theoretical possibility of a certain universal model of modern society through the global interaction of societies. From the point of view of entangled modernity, a certain universality of societies arises not from the structural evolution of society itself, but from the interaction of modern and pre-modern societies. The concept of entangled modernity allows one to analytically distinguish between the Soviet modernity and the Soviet period modernity, which can be used to describe the modern Lithuanian society of the Soviet period. The modern Lithuanian society of the Soviet period is the result of an interaction of the modern Lithuanian society with the Soviet project of modern society that was forcibly implemented by local social agents of the occupied society.

This article offers the concept of `global modernity' ( in the singular) as a way to understand the contemporary world. It suggests that the concept helps overcome the teleology implicit in a term such as globalization, while it also recognizes global difference and conflict, which are as much characteristics of the contemporary world as tendencies toward unity and homogenization. These differences, and the appearance of `alternative' or `multiple' modernities, it suggests, are expressions, and articulations, of the contradictions of modernity which are now universalized across, as well as within, societies. If we are to speak of alternative or multiple modernities, which presently valorize the persistence of traditions and `civilizational' legacies, we need to recognize that the very language of alternatives and multiplicity is enabled historically by the presupposition of a common modernity shaped by a globalizing capitalism.

The contention of this paper is that organic farming, the movement and ideology, challenges sociological theory of the nature–culture relation (environmental issues, the role of science). The idea is discussed and explored in two ways. Firstly the paper gives a 'diagnosis' of organic farming in terms of modernization. The organic farming movement is a social movement having some success in a period when the power of social movements in general seems low. It is also a movement with a radical view on environmental issues and the man–nature relationship. Recently, several researchers have written about the institutionalization of organic farming, where institutionalization might be understood as a kind of modernization. How can we understand the organic farming movement in terms of modernization? Is the organic farming movement a movement opposing modernity, arguing for pre‐modern structures of society? Is it perfectly modern in the classical sense? Or is the existence of the organic farming movement rather a frontier empirical example of the reflexive state of modern society? The Danish organic farming movement serves as an example for the discussion. The 'diagnosis' depends on the theoretical point of departure – which theory of modernity is used. This leads to the second approach, namely the comparison of Ulrich Beck's theory of risk society and Bruno Latour's theory of actor‐networks. Both theories are dealing explicitly with the nature–culture relation in late (or 'post' or 'reflexive') modern societies.

What is the conceptual status of modernity in the Muslim world? Scholars describe Muslim attempts at appropriating this European idea as being either derivative or incomplete, with a few calling for multiple modernities to allow modern Islam some autonomy. Such approaches are critical of the apologetic way in which Muslims have grappled with the idea of modernity, the purity and autonomy of the concept of which is apparently compromised by its derivative and incomplete appropriation. None have attended to the conceptual status of this apologetic itself, though it is certainly the most important element in Muslim debates on the modern. This essay considers the adoption of modernity as an idea among Muslim intellectuals in nineteenth-century India, a place in which some of the earliest and most influential debates on Islam's modernity occurred. It argues that Muslim apologetics created a modernity whose rejection of purity and autonomy permitted it a distinctive conceptual form.