Suchergebnisse

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.

The "insignificant incident" and its aftermath -- Alien to modernity -- Raping the dead -- Killers, torturers, sadists, and collaborators -- Revolutionary justice -- Cruel survival -- Tortured souls -- The ghostly arts -- Apocalypse now -- Afterword. hypocrite modernity

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware-focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book i

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents in Brief -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface: Origins and the Analysis of Modernity -- Acknowledgments -- Part One History of Modern Social Forms -- 1 Modern Selves and Fashion -- Medieval Identity -- The Black Death -- Modern Subjectivity -- Burgundian Fashion and Moral Worth -- Italian Fashion and the Distant Self -- Spanish Fashion and the Christian Warrior -- Dutch Fashion and Consumer Culture -- French Fashion and the Theater of Power -- Fashionable Dress and Modern Selves -- 2 Communities of Strangers and Infrastructure -- Print Infrastructure and the Wars of Religion -- The Parisian Water Supply -- 3 Cultural Imaginaries and Modern States -- Immersive Theater and Political Spectacle -- Learning by Doing -- The Power of the Artisans -- The Modern State -- 4 Discursive Modernity and Global Industrial Capitalism -- Philosophical Modernities -- Modern Nation States -- Modern Cities -- The Experimental Self -- Part Two Genealogies of Modern Social Types -- 5 Geopolitics and Discourses of Race -- Monogenesis and Moral Differences (Cell A) -- Monogenesis and Degree of Civilization (Cell B) -- Polygenesis and Difference of Temperament (Cell C) -- Polygenesis and Racial Supremacy (Cell D) -- The Legacy of Racial Imaginaries -- 6 Property, Labor, and Discourses of Gender -- Gendered Differences -- Natural Man and Artificial Woman -- Gender, Property, and Labor -- Gender Culture and Industrial Labor -- 7 The Ascent of Man and Discourses of Childhood -- Modern Versions of Childhood -- Developmental Childhood -- Animals and Monsters -- The Problem of Modern Selves -- Part Three Popular Tools of Modern Life -- 8 Digital Games and Navigating Modernity -- Games as Pedagogical Tools -- Serious Games of Military Simulation

Modernity has always laid claim to universal certainty--which meant assigning a different and lesser significance to anything deemed purely local, non-Western, or lacking a universal expression. Focusing on the making of modernity outside the West, eight leading anthropologists, historians, and political theorists explore the production of new forms of politics, sensibility, temporality, and selfhood in locations ranging from nineteenth-century Bengal to contemporary Morocco

Modernity has always laid claim to universal certainty--which meant assigning a different and lesser significance to anything deemed purely local, non-Western, or lacking a universal expression. Focusing on the making of modernity outside the West, eight leading anthropologists, historians, and political theorists explore the production of new forms of politics, sensibility, temporality, and selfhood in locations ranging from nineteenth-century Bengal to contemporary Morocco.

This book examines recent debates on the political dynamics of cosmopolitanism, particularly in its connection with European civil society and the public sphere. The aim of the volume is to trace to what extent cosmopolitanism corresponds to «second modernity», with the latter concept referring to the potential for consensus, the creation of multiple political alternatives and the recognition of otherness. The book accordingly explores questions about democratic legitimacy and the formation of social and political institutions and presents empirical research on phenomena such as global violence.The volume is intended to constitute a cosmopolitan project in itself, comprising contributions from scholars with very diverse approaches. Together, these contributions provide a stimulating analysis of what cosmopolitanism can offer to socially and politically diverse twenty-first-century societies

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Out of the Ordinary: Implications of Material Culture and Daily Life in China - Hanchao Lu -- 2. The Violence of the Everyday in Early Twentieth-Century China - Rebecca Karl -- 3. Discursive Community and the Genealogy of Scientific Categories - Wang Hui -- 4. The Modernity of Savings, 1900-1937 - Brett Sheehan -- 5. Reimagining China: Xiamen, Overseas Chinese, and a Transnational Modernity - James A. Cook -- 6. Shanghai's China Traveler - Madeleine Yue Dong -- 7. Self-Development of Migrant Women and the Production of Suzhi (Quality) as Surplus Value - Yan Hairong -- 8. The Remains of the Everyday: One Hundred Years of Recycling in Beijing - Joshua Goldstein -- 9. From Provision to Exchange: Legalizing the Market in China's Urban Water Supply - Alana Boland -- Contributors -- Index.

This book examines the relevance of some major aspects and assumptions of contemporary social and cultural theory to one society that has a very different history and conception of its self-identity from the Western ones in which the modern social sciences have almost exclusively arisen. Japan presents arguably the biggest challenge to the preoccupations and epistemiology of much conventional sociological and cultural thinking. The issue is approached through the concept of "postmodernity", which has only recently been applied to Japan. The value of this construction is explored through an exa