Thinking about

Modernity:
What does it mean
to be “modern”?
August 18, 2023
j. n. abletis
DSA
 20 mins activity
Activity Instructions:
• Divide the class into 4 groups. Arrange chairs in a circle.
• Share how your guardians/parents talk about their childhood and how they
compare their experiences with yours. (Noong kabataan ko/noong bata pa
ako/noong panahon ko/When I was your age/Back in my days… etc. One must
take notes of the answers.)
Questions:
• What are the commonalities and differences in the stories?
• Identify what features or characteristics of modernity stand out from the
comparison.
• What makes those features/characteristics “modern”? What does it mean to
be modern?
• One must report in class the output of the group (5 mins per group)
What is “contemporary”?
What does it mean?

MODERN
LATEST
TRENDING
1. Time
- fleeting?
- continuities, discontinuities
- periodization
2. Activity/Happening/Event
- individual
- collective
- associated/related/
interconnected/intersected/
converging/overlapping, etc.
- attention received
3. Access/Source/Media
- TV, Social Media, Radio, Print,
Gossip/Usap-usap, etc.
4. Space
- physical (local, national)
- digital/cyber
- conceptual/discursive
“MODERNITY”
• Themes/Elements of Modernity (Hall, Held, & McGrew 1992:2-4)
1. distinct and unique form of social life in modern societies
- As “scientific,” “rational,” “secular” vs. the “traditional” and “religious” (Enlightenment Period,
late 1600-1700s)
- Industrial Revolution, Urbanization(1800s)
- As a global phenomenon (1900s)
• Themes/Elements of Modernity (Hall, Held, & McGrew 1992:2-4)
2. Modernity as the articulation of different historical processes (economic –
colonialism, industrial capitalism, global capitalism, political – rise of secular state, social –
formation of clases, division of labour, cultural – from religious to secular culture)
• Themes/Elements of Modernity (Hall, Held, & McGrew 1992:2-4)
3. intersection of national and international conditions and processes
4. capitalist market relations becoming global in scale; striking inequality among
and within nation-states; new occupational groups arise, esp. service-oriented labor force
• Themes/Elements of Modernity (Hall, Held, & McGrew 1992:2-4)
5. Characterized by cluster of institutions – nation-state, IGO, INGOs, IMS, Global
Corporations, bureaucratic organizations.
6. Modern states are large, interventionist (surveillance), administratively bureaucratic. Most

subscribe to liberal democracy as a result of competing group/party interests and

pressures from the international arena.

6.
7. Globalization shapes politics, economy, and culture at accelerated pace and scale;
compression of space and time.
“the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world
time and world space.” (Steger 2014:27)
“the compression of the world into a single place increasingly makes 'the global' the frame of
reference for human thought and action.” (Robertson 1992 as cited in Steger 2014: 26)
8. Tradition has weakened in favour of individualism and consumerism, resulting into
varied lifestyles—“life as a project,” constructing own identity. Life is secular and materialist.
Weakening boundary between private and public.
Modernity • “the period from the mid-eighteenth-century European
Enlightenment to at least the mid-1980s, characterized

in history by secularization, rationalization, democratization,

individualization and the rise of science” (Giddens and
Sutton 2017)
• an “umbrella” term for the characteristics of post-feudal
European society: industrialization, urbanization,
capitalism, secularization, democracy, science, equality
(Ibid)
• associated with progress and development. First, an
internal European project, then a universal strategy in the
mid-20th century: the “development project”/
“modernization” in the 1940s to 1970s, then the
“globalization project” from the 1970s to 2000s
(McMichael 2008: 20-21).
• Globalization
 • Notions of being and becoming modern are potentially

Defining
ideological (Knauf 2002:3)—e.g., “progress”, ”globalism”,
“civilizing mission”, “land development”, etc.

Modernity • [the emergence of the modern world] “rests on two

fundamental assumptions: rupture and difference–a
is problematic! temporal rupture that distinguishes a traditional, agrarian past
from the modern, industrial present; and a fundamental
difference that distinguishes Europe from the rest of the world”
(Bhambra 2004:1)
• “Eurocentrism is the belief, implicit or otherwise, in the world
historical significance of events believed to have developed
endogenously within the cultural-geographical sphere of Europe.”
(Bhambra 2004:5)
§ assumes the specialness, autonomous development, and
coherence of Europe (ibid)
§ alternative modernities assume that modernity comes from the
West to the rest; the first experiencing pure modernity, the latter
with “hybrid” modernity (Ibid:6); inherent construction of
“otherness”
§ ideas of rupture and difference are only “interpretive categories”
(Ibid:7)
 “tradition and modernity are not necessarily incompatible; cultural
Relationship tradition “helps to preserve a distinct national identity over
between successive generations”… “tradition provides the essential cultural

Modernity
reference to which modernity must refer” (Yu and Lu 2000:385)

and
Tradition
explained.

Photo: https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/10-ways-life-in-kyoto-is-different-than-tokyo
Modernity • "images and institutions associated with Western-style
as experience progress and development in a contemporary world."
(Knauf 2002:18)

• Knauft (2002) proposes “alternative modernities” –

pluralized modernity—situational, processual, non-
classificatory; recognizes selective appropriation,
opposition, and redefinition of actors

• Roland Robertson – “glocalization” – “the mixing of

global and local elements - to capture the way that local
communities actively modify global processes to fit into
indigenous cultures” (Giddens and Sutton 2017)
 • Modernity is not just the contemporary or a ”set of

Modernity
products” (Friedman 2002:289)

as experience • “modern life is associated with the appreciative search for

new meaning in the daily features of a differentiated
social world” (Knauft 2002:5) – alterity (“the founding
dynamic of modernism, is an understanding of the world in
which identity is reduced increasingly to social role,
achieved rather than ascribed, temporary, and even
alienated from the subject” (Friedman 2002:298).

• Friedman (2002:298): Modernity “is a set of properties of

a series of interconnected dynamic processes” […]
“dependent on the degree of intensity of capital
Photo: https://theconversation.com/people-feel-lonelier-in-crowded-cities-but-green-spaces-can-help-173516
accumulation and commodification of the social field” —
[it is] “the cultural field of commercial capitalism, its
emergent identity space.”
Let’s stop here
and go back to those
questions before we
end the course…
August 18, 2023 j. n. abletis
DSA
References:

• Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological

Imagination. NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Knauft, Bruce M. 2002. "Critically Modern: An Introduction." Pp. 1-54 in Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities,
Anthropologies, edited by B. M. Knauft. IN: Indiana University Press.
• Friedman, Jonathan. 2002. "Modernity and Other Traditions." Pp. 287-313 in Critically Modern: Alternatives,
Alterities, Anthropologies, edited by B. M. Knauft. IN: Indiana University Press.
• Giddens, Anthony and Philip W. Sutton. 2017. Essential Concepts in Sociology, 2nd Ed. UK: Polity Press.
• Hall, Stuart, David Held, and Gregor McLennan. 1992. "Introduction." Pp. 1-11 in Modernity and Its Futures, edited
by s. Hall, D. Held, and T. McGrew. UK: Polity Press.
• McMichael, Philip. 2008. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, 4th ed. CA: Pine Forge Press.
• Steger, Manfred. 2014. "Market Globalism." Pp. 23-38 in The SAGE Handbook of Globalization, Vol. 1, edited by
M. Steger, P. Battersby, and J. M. Siracusa. CA: Sage.
• Yu, Bingyi and Zhaolu Lu. 2000. "Confucianism and Modernity—Insights from an Interview with Tu Wei-ming."
China Review International 7(2):377–387.