Recognizing European Modernities

For over a century, Europe has been characterised by a plurality of capitalist modernities. At any moment, each country possesses its own distinctly modern qualities which are partly shaped through interrelationships with other countries. Each European commodity society has experienced successive, but different overlapping, periods of industrial modernity (large scale factories and urban growth), high modernity (social modernization promoted by social engineering) and hypermodernity (the acceleration of modernity, yielding new circumstances and sensibilities). Interrogating contemporary hypermodern Europe thus requires an exploration of industrial and high modern Europe. Recognising European Modernities explores a century of civilisation through a critical examination of the extreme case of Sweden. Using montage - relayering multiple pasts and on-going present - the book challenges the contemporary obsession with postmodernity, demanding a deeper, more connective understanding of the pleasures and dangers of the European present. The author visits three spectacular spaces: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Globe, a contemporary multi-purpose arena. Analysis of these pivotal spaces reveals the on-going process of modernization as new forms of consumption are repeatedly entangled in changing discourses of power to be reworked and translated into cultural politics.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For over a century, Europe has been characterised by a plurality of capitalist modernities. At any moment, each country possesses its own distinctly modern qualities which are partly shaped through interrelationships with other countries. Each European commodity society has experienced successive, but different overlapping, periods of industrial modernity (large scale factories and urban growth), high modernity (social modernization promoted by social engineering) and hypermodernity (the acceleration of modernity, yielding new circumstances and sensibilities). Interrogating contemporary hypermodern Europe thus requires an exploration of industrial and high modern Europe. Recognising European Modernities explores a century of civilisation through a critical examination of the extreme case of Sweden. Using montage - relayering multiple pasts and on-going present - the book challenges the contemporary obsession with postmodernity, demanding a deeper, more connective understanding of the pleasures and dangers of the European present. The author visits three spectacular spaces: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Globe, a contemporary multi-purpose arena. Analysis of these pivotal spaces reveals the on-going process of modernization as new forms of consumption are repeatedly entangled in changing discourses of power to be reworked and translated into cultural politics.

Multiple Modernities is a departure from the "classic" sociological homogenization theories. The edition presents an interdisciplinary discussion of the topic in sociological, historical and economic dimensions. It explores culturally specific forms of modernity with a focus on China and Europe.

Keith Tester examines modernity through the prism of the two sovereigns - of the individual and the collectivity. It is a stimulating meditation on the difficult and contradictory experiences of European modernity.

It is often taken for granted that modernity emerged in Europe and diffused from there across the world. This book questions that assumption and re-examines the question of European modernity in the light of world history. Bo Stråth and Peter Wagner re-position Europe in the global context of the 19th and 20th centuries. They show that Europe is less modern than has been assumed, and modernity less European and thus decentre Europe in a way that makes room for a wider historical perspective. Adopting a thematic structure, the authors reconceive the idea of European modernity in relation to key topics such as democracy, capitalism and market society, individual autonomy, religion and politics. European Modernity is an important addition to the literature that will be of interest to all students and scholars of modern European history.

A thoroughly readable, far-reaching analysis of "modernity" and "the modern, " this book focuses on the specific periods and places where ideas and practices of being modern are created and challenged. Peter J. Taylor contends that modernity is a multiple phenomenon: that is, different modern times and different modern spaces exist in a world of multiple modernities. He argues that three "prime modernities" have been defined by the development of the modern world -- from mercantile modernity to British-led industrial modernity to today's American-led consumer modernity -- and illustrates the cultural expression of these modernities as "acts of the ordinary, " such as paintings, the home, and the suburbs. In a masterly analysis of politics and the state in terms of the modern, Taylor shows how each political organization of a particular modernity creates an appropriate political reaction -- for instance, the socialism prompted by British modernity and the environmentalism called forth by American modernity. In noting the tendency of states to create spaces and eschew places, he draws an intriguing parallel between nation states and home-households. Taylor describes the project of Americanization as a new form of modernity and also suggests an end to American hegemony.

This Book Begins With An Exploration Of The Origins Of Modernity In European Science And Religion And Proceeds To A Discussion Of The End Of Modernity.

Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory. In Europe, there indeed exist independent countries, insignificant from the point of view of the entire civilization, and born by sheer coincidence, yet, this coincidence, this fancy, or diplomatic ploy that created them can just as easily bring them to an end---the nations that count in the political calculations are only the enlightened ones. Therefore, our nation should not merely grow in power, strengthen its character, and foster in people the feeling of love for homeland, but also---inasmuch as it is possible---breath the fresh breeze of humanity's general progress, feed it to the nation, absorb its creative energy. Until now, we have trusted and lived only in the weary conditions, conditions devoid of health-giving elements---now, as a result the nation's heart beats too slowly and its mind works too tediously. We ought to open our windows to Europe, to the wind of continental change and allow it to air our sultry home, since as not all health comes from the inside, not all disease comes from the outside.

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either incomplete or lacking. Provincializing Europe proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well--a translation of existing worlds and their thought--categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Now featuring a new preface in which Chakrabarty responds to his critics, this book globalizes European thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins.