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Book Modernity as Experience and Interpretation

Download or read book Modernity as Experience and Interpretation written by Peter Wagner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Book Modernity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter Wagner
  • Publisher : Polity
  • Release : 2012-02-13
  • ISBN : 0745652913
  • Pages : 207 pages

Download or read book Modernity written by Peter Wagner and published by Polity. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a brief, authoritative and accessible introduction to the idea of modernity, written by a leading social theorist. Wagner shows that modernity was based on ideas of freedom, reason and progress, but he examines the extent to which these ideas have been, and can be, realized in the modern world.

Book Experience Without Qualities

Download or read book Experience Without Qualities written by Elizabeth S. Goodstein and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the emergence and evolution of the modern discourse on boredom in French and German literary, philosophical, and sociological texts, this book fills a gap in the intellectual and cultural history of European modernity.

Book Modernity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter Wagner
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2013-04-18
  • ISBN : 0745656846
  • Pages : 162 pages

Download or read book Modernity written by Peter Wagner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a modern age, but what does ‘modern’ mean and how can a reflection on ‘modernity’ help us to understand the world today? These are the questions that Peter Wagner sets out to answer in this concise and accessible book. Wagner begins by returning to the question of modernity's Western origins and its claims to open up a new and better era in the history of humanity. Modernity's claims and expectations have become more prevalent and widely shared, but in the course of their realization and diffusion they have also been radically transformed. In an acute and engaging analysis, Wagner examines the following key issues among others: - Modernity was based on the hope for freedom and reason, but it created the institutions of contemporary capitalism and democracy. How does the freedom of the citizen relate to the freedom of the buyer and seller today? And what does disaffection with capitalism and democracy entail for the sustainability of modernity? - Rather than a single model of modernity, there is now a plurality of forms of modern socio-political organisation. What does this entail for our idea of progress and our hope that the future world can be better than the present one? - All nuance and broadening notwithstanding, our concept of modernity is in some way inextricably tied to the history of Europe and the West. How can we compare different forms of modernity in a 'symmetric', non-biased or non-Eurocentric way? How can we develop a world-sociology of modernity?

Book Modernities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter James Taylor
  • Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
  • Release : 1999-01-01
  • ISBN : 9780816633951
  • Pages : 1054 pages

Download or read book Modernities written by Peter James Taylor and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 1054 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Book The Formations of Modernity

Download or read book The Formations of Modernity written by Bram Gieben and published by Polity. This book was released on 1993-01-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formations of Modernity is a major introductory textbook offering an account of the important historical processes, institutions and ideas that have shaped the development of modern societies. This challenging and innovative book 'maps' the evolution of those distinctive forms of political, economic, social and cultural life which characterize modern societies, from their origins in early modern Europe to the nineteenth century. It examines the roots of modern knowledge and the birth of the social sciences in the Enlightenment, and analyses the impact on the emerging identity of 'the West' of its encounters through exploration, trade, conquest and colonization, with 'other civilizations'. Designed as an introduction to modern societies and modern sociological analyses, this book is of value to students on a wide variety of social science courses in universities and colleges and also to readers with no prior knowledge of sociology. Selected readings from a broad range of classical writers (Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Freud, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) and contemporary thinkers (Michael Mann, E.P. Thompson, Edward Said) are integrated in each chapter, together with student questions and exercises.

Book Mind  Modernity  Madness

Download or read book Mind Modernity Madness written by Liah Greenfeld and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading interpreter of modernity argues that our culture of limitless self-fulfillment is making millions mentally ill. Training her analytic eye on manic depression and schizophrenia, Liah Greenfeld, in the culminating volume of her trilogy on nationalism, traces these dysfunctions to society’s overburdening demands for self-realization.

Book African  American and European Trajectories of Modernity

Download or read book African American and European Trajectories of Modernity written by Peter Wagner and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African, American and European Trajectories of Modernity asks why, from some moment onwards, 'Europe' and 'the rest of the world' entered into a particular relationship: one of domination, conceived as a kind of superiority and as an 'advance' in historic

Book Tradition and Modernity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kwame Gyekye
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
  • Release : 1997
  • ISBN : 0195112253
  • Pages : 359 pages

Download or read book Tradition and Modernity written by Kwame Gyekye and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times, and shows how Western philosophical concepts help in addressing a wide range of specifically African problems.

Book All that is Solid Melts Into Air

Download or read book All that is Solid Melts Into Air written by Marshall Berman and published by Verso. This book was released on 1983 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.

Book Modernity Theory

Download or read book Modernity Theory written by John Jervis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-29 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Book Interpreting Modernity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jacob Levy
  • Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
  • Release : 2020-10-15
  • ISBN : 0228002834
  • Pages : 311 pages

Download or read book Interpreting Modernity written by Jacob Levy and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few philosophical questions to which Charles Taylor has not devoted his attention. His work has made powerful contributions to our understanding of action, language, and mind. He has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the way in which the social sciences should be practised, taking an interpretive stance in opposition to dominant positivist methodologies. Taylor's powerful critiques of atomistic versions of liberalism have redefined the agenda of political philosophers. He has produced prodigious intellectual histories aiming to excavate the origins of the way in which we have construed the modern self, and of the complex intellectual and spiritual trajectories that have culminated in modern secularism. Despite the apparent diversity of Taylor's work, it is driven by a unified vision. Throughout his writings, Taylor opposes reductive conceptions of the human and of human societies that empiricist and positivist thinkers from David Hume to B.F. Skinner believed would lend rigour to the human sciences. In their place, Taylor has articulated a vision of humans as interpretive beings who can be understood neither individually nor collectively without reference to the fundamental goods and values through which they make sense of their lives. The contributors to this volume, all distinguished philosophers and social theorists in their own right, offer critical assessments of Taylor's writings. Taken together, they provide the reader with an unrivalled perspective on the full extent of Charles Taylor's contribution to modern philosophy.

Book Theorizing Modernity

Download or read book Theorizing Modernity written by Peter Wagner and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2001-01-22 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that sociology has lost its ability to provide critical diagnoses of the present human condition because sociology has stopped considering the philosophical requirements of social enquiry. The book attempts to restore that ability by retrieving some of the key questions that sociologists tend to gloss over, inescapability and attainability. The book identifies five key questions in which issues of inescapability and attainability emerge. These are the questions of the certainty of our knowledge, the viability of our politics, the continuity of our selves, the accessibility of the past, and the transparency of the future. The book demonstrates how these questions are addressed in different forms and by different intellectual means during the past 200 years and shows how they persist today.

Book Max Weber s Theory of Modernity

Download or read book Max Weber s Theory of Modernity written by Michael Symonds and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber’s theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit gives sense to the phenomena of human suffering and death. Through a close, scholarly reading of Weber’s extensive writings and Vocation Lectures, the author explores the concepts of ’paradox’ and ’brotherliness’ as found in Weber’s work, in order to offer an original exposition of Weber’s actual theory of how meaning and meaninglessness work in the modern world. In addition to making a substantial and highly original contribution to the sociology of modernity, the book applies the theory of meaning extracted from Weber’s thought, addressing the claim that Weber’s work has been rendered out-dated by the supposed re-enchantment of the modern world, as well as discussing the ways this theory can contribute to our understanding of the development of specific forms of modernity. A rigorous examination of the thought of one of the most important figures in classical sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in modernity, Weber and the concept of meaning.

Book Women s Experience of Modernity  1875 1945

Download or read book Women s Experience of Modernity 1875 1945 written by Leslie W. Lewis and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-01-27 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing such cultural practices as selling and shopping, political and social activism, urban field work and rural labor, radical discourses on feminine sexuality, and literary and artistic experimentation, this volume contributes to the rich vein of current feminist scholarship on the "gender of modernism" and challenges the assumption that modernism rose naturally or inevitably to the forefront of the cultural landscape at the turn of the twentieth century.".

Book Islam and Modernity

    Book Details:
  • Author : N. Hanif
  • Publisher : Sarup & Sons
  • Release : 1997
  • ISBN : 9788176250023
  • Pages : 412 pages

Download or read book Islam and Modernity written by N. Hanif and published by Sarup & Sons. This book was released on 1997 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Present Title Is A Descriptive Analysis Of The Nature, Motivation And Changes In Islam In Modern Indian Perspectives. It Has Been Studied From Three Point Of Views Metaphysical Institutional And Historical. Metaphysical Studies Deals With The Concept Of Truth And Its Ultimate Destiny, However Institutional Study Involves In Mode Of Belief And Worship. Both Studies Are Challenged By Modern Islamic Historians. All Islamic Modernists Have Raised Question Mark On The Traditional Islamic Thought And Theology. The Creation Of New Values And Preservation Of Old Tradition Has Created Some Problem Among Islamic Modernists. In Context Of Indian Muslims, Such A Fresh Outlook By Indian Islamic Scholars, Is Absolutely Essential For Giving Enlightment And Guidance Of Lay Muslims, Who Stand Totally Confused By The Antagonistic Ideas.