Modernity as Experience and Interpretation

Häftad, Engelska, 2008

AvPeter Wagner

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We are all modern today. But modernity today is not what it used to be. Over the past few decades, modernity has been radically changed by globalization, individualization, new inequalities, and fundamentalism. A novel way of analysing contemporary societies is needed. This book proposes such an analysis. Every society seeks answers to certain basic questions: how to order life in common; how to satisfy human needs; how to establish knowledge. Sociology long assumed that the answers had been found once and for all: a liberal-democratic state, a market economy, and free scientific institutions. This trinity used to be called ‘modern society’.By contrast, this book is based on the idea that, under conditions of modernity, there are no stable and certain answers to these questions. There is a plurality of possible answers, every proposed answer can be criticized and contested, and every society needs to find its answer on its own.This new sociology of modernity proposes two key instruments through which to understand the answers given to those questions: the experiences human beings have of their own modernity and the interpretations they give to those experiences. It reviews the history of ‘Western’ modernity in this light and then focuses on the specific answers that were and are being developed in Europe.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2008-04-11
Mått152 x 229 x 24 mm
Vikt472 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor296
FörlagJohn Wiley and Sons Ltd
ISBN9780745642192

Tillhör följande kategorier

Sociologi inom Samhälle och politik

Preface vii1 Ways of Understanding Modernity 1Part I: Interpretations of Political Modernity: Liberty and its Discontents 19Overture: Multiple Interpretations of Political Modernity 212 Modernity and the Question of Freedom 243 The Political Forms of Modernity 394 Modernity as a Project of Emancipation and the Possibility of Politics 62Part II: Interpretations of Economic Modernity: The Endgame and After 75Overture: Capitalism and Modernity as Social Formations and as Imaginary Signifi cations 775 The Critique of Capitalism and its Impasse 836 Towards a Historical-Comparative Sociology of Capitalism 1037 The Exit from Organized Economic Modernity 123Part III: Interpretations of Epistemic Modernity: Distance and Involvement 143Overture: The Quest for Knowledge beyond Experience and Interpretation 1458 The Critique of Science and its Prospects 1499 Varieties of Socio-political Interpretations of Modernity 165Part IV: The European Experience and Interpretation of Modernity 189Overture: European Integration as an Interpretation of Modernity 19110 Logics of European History 19611 Regionalizing European Modernity 215Part V: The Analysis of Modernity and the Need for a New Sociology 231Overture: When the Light of the Cultural Problems has Moved On 23312 The Social Theory and Political Philosophy of Modernity 23513 The Conceptual History and Historical Sociology of Modernity 247Notes 265References 282Index 297