Modernity Theory

Modernity Theory PDF Author: John Jervis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137496762
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Modernity theory approaches modern experience as it incorporates a sense of itself as ‘modern’ (modernity), along with the possibilities and limitations of representing this in the arts and culture generally (modernism). The book interrogates modernity in the name of a fluid, unsettled, unsettling modernism. As the offspring of the Enlightenment and the Age of Sensibility, modernity is framed here through a cultural aesthetics that highlights not just an instrumental, exploitative approach to the world but the distinctive configuration of embodiment, feeling, and imagination, that we refer to as ‘civilization’, in turn both explored and subverted through modernist experimentalism and reflexive thinking in culture and the arts. This discloses the rationalizing pretensions that underlie the modern project and have resulted in the sensationalist, melodramatic conflicts of good and evil that traverse our contemporary world of politics and popular culture alike. This innovative approach permits modernity theory to link otherwise fragmented insights of separate humanities disciplines, aspects of sociology, and cultural studies, by identifying and contributing to a central strand of modern thought running from Kant through Benjamin to the present. One aspect of modernity theory that results is that it cannot escape the paradoxes inherent in reflexive involvement in its own history.

Modernity Theory

Modernity Theory PDF Author: John Jervis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137496762
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Get Book

Book Description
Modernity theory approaches modern experience as it incorporates a sense of itself as ‘modern’ (modernity), along with the possibilities and limitations of representing this in the arts and culture generally (modernism). The book interrogates modernity in the name of a fluid, unsettled, unsettling modernism. As the offspring of the Enlightenment and the Age of Sensibility, modernity is framed here through a cultural aesthetics that highlights not just an instrumental, exploitative approach to the world but the distinctive configuration of embodiment, feeling, and imagination, that we refer to as ‘civilization’, in turn both explored and subverted through modernist experimentalism and reflexive thinking in culture and the arts. This discloses the rationalizing pretensions that underlie the modern project and have resulted in the sensationalist, melodramatic conflicts of good and evil that traverse our contemporary world of politics and popular culture alike. This innovative approach permits modernity theory to link otherwise fragmented insights of separate humanities disciplines, aspects of sociology, and cultural studies, by identifying and contributing to a central strand of modern thought running from Kant through Benjamin to the present. One aspect of modernity theory that results is that it cannot escape the paradoxes inherent in reflexive involvement in its own history.

Modernity and Power

Modernity and Power PDF Author: Frank Ninkovich
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226586502
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Modernity and Power provides a fresh conceptual overview of twentieth-century United States foreign policy, from the Roosevelt and Taft administrations through the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson. Beginning with Woodrow Wilson, American leaders gradually abandoned the idea of international relations as a game of geopolitical interplays, basing their diplomacy instead on a symbolic opposition between "world public opinion" and the forces of destruction and chaos. Frank Ninkovich provocatively links this policy shift to the rise of a distinctly modernist view of history. To emphasize the central role of symbolism and ideological assumptions in twentieth-century American statesmanship, Ninkovich focuses on the domino theory—a theory that departed radically from classic principles of political realism by sanctioning intervention in world regions with few financial or geographic claims on the national interest. Ninkovich insightfully traces the development of this global strategy from its first appearance early in the century through the Vietnam war. Throughout the book, Ninkovich draws on primary sources to recover the worldview of the policy makers. He carefully assesses the coherence of their views rather than judge their actions against "objective" realities. Offering a new alternative to realpolitic and economic explanations of foreign policy, Modernity and Power will change the way we think about the history of U.S. international relations.

Colonialism and Modern Social Theory

Colonialism and Modern Social Theory PDF Author: Gurminder K. Bhambra
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509541314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Modern society emerged in the context of European colonialism and empire. So, too, did a distinctively modern social theory, laying the basis for most social theorising ever since. Yet colonialism and empire are absent from the conceptual understandings of modern society, which are organised instead around ideas of nation state and capitalist economy. Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood address this absence by examining the role of colonialism in the development of modern society and the legacies it has bequeathed. Beginning with a consideration of the role of colonialism and empire in the formation of social theory from Hobbes to Hegel, the authors go on to focus on the work of Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Du Bois. As well as unpicking critical omissions and misrepresentations, the chapters discuss the places where colonialism is acknowledged and discussed – albeit inadequately – by these founding figures; and we come to see what this fresh rereading has to offer and why it matters. This inspiring and insightful book argues for a reconstruction of social theory that should lead to a better understanding of contemporary social thought, its limitations, and its wider possibilities.

Modernity in Indian Social Theory

Modernity in Indian Social Theory PDF Author: A. Raghuramaraju
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199088365
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.

A Theory of Modernity

A Theory of Modernity PDF Author: Agnes Heller
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9780631216124
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Written by one of the most influential figures in post-World-War-II social thought, A Theory of Modernity is a comprehensive analysis of the main dynamics of modernity, which discusses the technological, social and political elements of modernism. Heller's unique exploration of the traditional works from Hegel, Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Arendt combined with the wisdom gained from her life experiences, allows the reader to grasp the essence of modernity. Some of her encounters are idiosyncratic, while others are shared with all who lived through the Holocaust and totalitarian dictatorships. This engaging and enlightening view of modernity is an essential read for academics, researchers, and students of twentieth-century philosophy.

Health and Modernity

Health and Modernity PDF Author: David V. McQueen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387377573
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Pandemics, substance abuse, natural disasters, obesity, and warfare: these are not only health crises but social crises as well. Now a panel of leaders in global health explores the vital but understudied social theories behind the practice of health promotion, including cultural capital, risk and causality, systems theory, and the dynamic between individual and community.

Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity

Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity PDF Author: Bryan S. Turner
Publisher: Sage Publications Limited
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
This book encapsulates the recent debate on the concepts of modernity and postmodernity. Arguments over modernism and its aftermath are traced to their origins in art, architecture and literature. The authors then focus on the contribution of sociology to this cultural dispute through the theories of Weber, Simmel, Habermas, Lyotard and Baudrillard. Throughout, Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity demonstrates the connections between traditional problems of sociological theory and the contemporary debate around modernity.

The Subject of Modernity

The Subject of Modernity PDF Author: Anthony J. Cascardi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521423786
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Anthony J. Cascardi offers an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject of self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth.

Media and Modernity

Media and Modernity PDF Author: John B. Thompson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
This wide-ranging and innovative book develops an original theory of the media and their impact on the modern world, from the emergence of printing to the most recent developments in the media industries.

Social Acceleration

Social Acceleration PDF Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231148348
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.