Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:15:25.152Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The historical logics of global modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2015

Prasenjit Duara
Prasenjit Duara
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, I will develop the analytics to grasp what I am calling global modernity and in particular to grasp the crisis of sustainability that it has produced. At the same time, by viewing modernity in a wider global and historical framework, I will explore the conceptual grounds for a more sustainable modernity. Analysts of modernity from at least Hegel through the modernization theorists have explored the philosophical and sociological conditions of rational approaches that promise material and spiritual emancipation. Yet, these approaches have not only had exorbitant historical costs, but they have also generated counter-finalities – Jean-Paul Sartre’s term – and what Ulrich Beck specifies as ‘reflexive’ or ‘second’ modernity to refer to the modernity of advanced capitalist societies. ‘Second’ modernity is no longer concerned with development per se but with management of the risks that are typically compounded by earlier modernization achievements (such as the nuclear fallout from the Japanese tsunami). Today the counter-finality stares us in the face as the crisis of planetary sustainability in the Anthropocene.

By exploring the global and historical underside of modernity, we can gain a more comprehensive view of our situation today when the rest of the world is seeking to catch up with the North Atlantic model of life. Further, I want to show how an alternative set of dynamic concepts can lead us to recover a relatively neglected source of historical transformations that may be critical to achieving a sustainable modernity. Among these concepts is the notion of ‘transcendence’, which, in my view, works – among its other functions – to control, direct and channel the ceaseless circulatory networks that transform society. To anticipate a principal theme of the chapter, the ‘high Culture’ of transcendent ideas seeks to anchor, subordinate and deploy the ‘small culture’ of circulatory transformations to its own projects and purposes. What differentiates modernity from such earlier modes is not merely the accelerating transformations of capitalism, but also the disenchanted cosmology of linear time that brooks no limits to the human conquest of nature.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Crisis of Global Modernity
Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future
 , pp. 91 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Critique of Dialectical Reason: Theory of Practical Ensembles, Trans. Sheridan-Smith, Alan, Ed. Rée, Jonathan (London: Verso, 1976)Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich and Grande, Edgar, “Varieties of Second Modernity: The Cosmopolitan Turn in Social and Political Theory and Research,” British Journal of Sociology, 61(3) (2010): 409–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kauffman, Stuart A., Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 11–12Google Scholar
Christian, David, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 123, 183, 251Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, 2012), ch. 5, pp. 110–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittrock, Björn, “The Meaning of the Axial Age,” in Arnason, Johann P., Eisenstadt, S. N. and Wittrock, Björn, Eds., Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 51–86, at p. 58Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern, Trans. Porter, Catherine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1993Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004)Google Scholar
Geyer, Michael and Bright, Charles, “World History in a Global Age,” American Historical Review, 100(4) (1995): 1034–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sewell, Jr. William H., The Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (New York: Verso, 1994), pp. 32–3Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel, “The Construction of Peoplehood: Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity,” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, Ed. Balibar, Etienne and Wallerstein, Immanuel (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 81–2Google Scholar
Human Development Report 2013 Summary, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World. United Nations Development Programme (New York: UN, 2013), pp. 1–2
Pietersee, Jan Nederveen, “Global Rebalancing: Crisis and the East-South Turn,” Development and Change, 42(1) (2011): 22–48, at p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidaway, James D., “Spaces of Postdevelopment,” Progress in Human Geography, 31 (2007): 345–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, Warwick E., “Neo-Liberalism Is Dead, Long Live Neo-Liberalism? Neo-Structuralism and the International Aid Regime of the 2000s,” Progress in Development Studies, 11(4) (2011): 307–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa, “Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia,” Theory, Culture & Society, 17(4) (2000): 55–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litfin, Karen T., “Sovereignty in World Ecopolitics,” Mershon International Studies Review, 41(2) (1997): 167–204, at pp. 175–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boli-Bennet, John and Meyer, John W., “The Ideology of Childhood and the State: Rules Distinguishing Children in National Constitutions, 1870–1970,” American Sociological Review, 43 (1978): 797–812CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gong, Gerrit W., The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984)Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shulman, David, “Axial Grammar,” in Arnason, J. P., Eisenstadt, S. N. and Wittrock, B., Eds., Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 369–94;Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel, Ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986)
Salvatore, Armando, The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism and Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaspers, Karl, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 8–20Google Scholar
Black, Antony, “The ‘Axial Period’: What Was It and What Does It Signify?,” Review of Politics, 70(1) (2008): 23–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Introduction by MacIver, R. M. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 132Google Scholar
Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of Eternal Return, with a new introduction by Smith, Jonathan Z. (Princeton University Press, 2005/1954), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar
Masuzawa, Tomoko, In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of Religion (University of Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Preface, 2nd edn. (London: Verso, 1991), p. xiiGoogle Scholar
Acton, John E. E. D., Essays in the Liberal Interpretation of History by Lord Acton, Ed. with introduction by McNeill, William H. (University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 157Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit, “The Cold War as a Historical Period: An Interpretive Essay,” Journal of Global History, 6(3) (2011): 457–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 209, 221Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony, Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kan, Shirley, U.S.–China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress. Updated May 10, 2005, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service. Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Order Code RL32496 ( ), p. 1Google Scholar
Ringmar, Eric, “The Recognition Game: Soviet Russia Against the West,” Cooperation and Conflict, 37(2) (2002): 115–36, at p. 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanhimaki, J. M. and Westad, O. A., The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 274–5Google Scholar
Coll, Steve, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004)Google Scholar
Xiaoping, Deng, “Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles,” Selected Works (1975–82) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984), p. 175Google Scholar
Iqtidar, Humeira, Secularizing Islamists? Jama’at-e-Islami and Jama’at-ud-Dawa in Urban Pakistan (University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit, “Historical Narratives and Transnationalism in East Asia,” in The Global and Regional in China’s Nation Formation, ch. 3 (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 60–76Google Scholar
Whooley, Owen, “Locating Masterframes in History: An Analysis of the Religious Masterframe of the Abolition Movement and Its Influence on Movement Trajectory,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 17 (2004): 490–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyn, Samuel, “The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History,” American Historical Review, 116(1) (2011): 58–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaviraj, Sudipta, “An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity,” Archives européennes de sociologie, 46 (2005): 497–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×