M ODERNITY AND G LOBALISATION Gurminder K. Bhambra

B OOK R EVIEW A good understanding of the book as a whole what is the author trying to do? what are the key problems or issues addressed? how does the author do this? what are the conclusions that the author comes to? A good understanding of the sociological claims within the texts Knowledge of relevant potential critiques by other authors and how well the book might stand up to these critiques A useful website on writing book reviews is:

B OOK R EVIEW Word length: words Word-processed, one and a half spaced Structure, paragraphs, punctuation, grammar Bibliography Presentation Title of book reviewed!

F ROM M ODERNIZATION T HEORY TO M ULTIPLE M ODERNITIES Week 7

S OCIOLOGY AND THE M ODERN Change = the standard idea of a linear movement from a traditional past to a modernized future Each form of society is superseded by a progressively higher form Traditional, or pre-modern, societies are compared with modern societies The sociological problem, then, is accounting for the historical transition from one form of society to the other

M ODERNIZATION T HEORY Bendix summarizes modernization theory as resting on three related assumptions: an understanding of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ as mutually exclusive social change occurring as a consequence of phenomena internal to the society changing a belief that modernity would eventually replace tradition and, in doing so, would have the same effects across the globe

M ODERNIZATION T HEORY Rests on a notion of convergence differences among societies would be erased as a consequence of the global diffusion of institutions originating in the West Scholars such as Rostow and Lerner believed that Western processes of modernization should be used as the basis of a model of global applicability Other societies would be classified in terms of their relative modernization in comparison with this model

M ODERN C IRCUMSTANCES While becoming modern in the first instance might be a consequence of peculiar circumstances seen to be historically contingent and perhaps unlikely (as set out by Weber in his study of the Protestant Ethic) Once Europe had become modern it was deemed to be able to show the way to the rest of the world

A FTER M ODERNIZATION T HEORY Modernization theory was replaced by dependency theory and world-systems theory these contested the linearity of earlier models and argued for more complex understandings of global economic systems The demise of modernization theory was also related to the move away from structural functional (Parsonian) explanations and the rise of more radical approaches, such as Marxism

A FTER M ODERNIZATION T HEORY The fall of communism in the 1990s once again reversed these radical sensibilities The convergence thesis, which had been discarded, turned out to be confirmed with Fukuyama (1992) most famously proclaiming a new ‘end of history’ This is the context in which the new paradigm of ‘multiple modernities’ came to be articulated, in particular, by Eisenstadt

T HE S HIFT TO M ULTIPLE M ODERNITIES The move from modernization to multiple modernities reflects unease with the idea of a singular, uniform trajectory applied to the diversity of societies in the world Eisenstadt and Schluchter (1998) suggest that the homogenizing tendencies of modernization theory have not led to convergence, not even in the West itself They believe that the idea of linear historical progress - from traditional to modern society - should give way to pluralized understandings of multiple modernities

F ALLACIES OF M ODERNITY Theorists of multiple modernities argue that two fallacies are to be avoided in the new paradigm the first, associated with earlier modernization theory, is that there is only one modernity the second, attributed to postcolonialism, is that looking from the West to the East is necessarily a form of Eurocentrism

M ULTIPLE M ODERNITIES Eisenstadt and Schluchter suggest that the global expansion of modernity ought not to be viewed ‘as a process of repetition but as the crystallization of new civilizations’; new civilizations that take as their reference point ‘the original Western crystallization of modernity’ (1998: 2, 3) This reference point is not a singular trajectory around which there is convergence, but one from which others deviate or diverge Thus, the reference point establishes a multiplicity of modernities and this multiplicity, in their view, is sufficient to avoid the charge of Eurocentrism

I NSTITUTIONS AND C ULTURE Modernity is understood in terms of its institutional constellations and its cultural programme This allows scholars to place European modernity – seen in terms of a particular conflation of the institutional and the cultural forms – as the originary modernity and allows for different cultural encodings that result in multiple modernities

Q UESTIONS Why have scholars previously believed in a singular ‘modernity’? Why is this belief seen to be ‘hopelessly naïve’ by Wittrock? What are the three key transitions of early modern societies? How do each of these transitions differ in civilisations outside of Europe?