First Published in 2004. Confusion reigns in sociological accounts of the curent condition of modernity. The story-lines from the 'end of the subject' to 'a new individualism', from the 'dissolution of society' to the re-emergence of 'civil society', from the 'end of modernity' to an 'other modernoity' to 'neo-modernization'. This book offers a sociology of modernity in terms of a historical account of social transformations over the past two centuries, focusing on Western Europe but also looking at the USA and at Soviet socialism as distinct variants of modernity. A fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the double notion of liberty and discipline in its three major dimensions: the relations between individual liberty and political community , betwen agency and structure, and between locally situated human lives and widely extended social institutions. Two major historical transformations of modernity are distinguished, the first one beginning in the late nineteenth century and leading to a social formation that can be called organized modernity, and the second being the one that dissolves organized modernity. It is this current transformation which revives some key concerns of the 'modern project', ideas of liberty, plurality and individual autonomy. But it imperils others, especially the creation of social identities as ties between human beings that allow meaningful and socially viable development of individual autonomy, and the possibility of politics as communicative interaction and collaborative deliberation about what human beings have in common.
About the AuthorPeter Wagner (Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute University of Trento, Italy)
Reviews`An outstandingly rigourous and, if simply for this reason alone - much needed, point of reference for the post-modernity/late-modernity debate. ... It is a grand narrative of the indispensable kind whose carefully crafted insights and justifications deserve to be widely and seriously reflected upon, to be challenged or consolidated.' - Publication Unknown 24.2.95
`Wagner's historical sociology of modernity makes fascinating and highly illuminating reading.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Times Higher
`Closing the book, the reader is wiser than at the moment of opening it, with that kind of wisdom which only a responsible thinker can confer.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Times Higher
Book InformationISBN 9780415081863
Author Peter WagnerFormat Paperback
Page Count 284
Imprint RoutledgePublisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g
