scholarly journals Is Modernity Single and Universal?: Olaju and the Multilateral Modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeshina Afolayan
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Global History ◽  
The West ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Knowledge Dynamics

This essay confronts two orthodoxies at the heart of the modernity debate. The first is that modernity, which supposedly originated from the West, is a sin­gle and universal historical development. The assumption therefore is that any genuine modernity elsewhere must proceed from aping the structuratlon of western modernity. The second orthodoxy challenges the first, and coalesces around the idea of multiple modernities, which do not share the historical con­tours of western modernity. Yet, these modernities supposedly take their ini­tiatives from the original source in the West. On the contrary, I will argue that these orthodoxies ignore a critical fact of global history: The concept of the modern was shaped and reshaped within a multilateral framework of confron­tations and conflicts amongst cultures and societies, which enabled each soci­ety to creatively respond and adapt itself to the changes it confronted. I will use the Yoruba concept of olaju as a conceptual foil to reconfigure the understand­ing of this multilateral modernity. With olaju, we arrive at the conclusion that both Europe and non-Europe are complicit in the formation and configuration of what it means to be modern. It is only from this premise that the foundation of multiple modernities can properly be erected. It is also from this premise that various societies can take charge of the elements of social change as well as the power and knowledge dynamics involved in it.

Modernity and diversity: reflections on the controversy between modernization theory and multiple modernists

2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker H. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Special Weight ◽  
Theoretical Frame ◽  
Developed World

The article revisits modernization theory’s convergence claim, which has been strongly criticized by multiple modernists, who maintain that emerging realities have not borne out its underlying premises. Based on a thorough reading of classical texts, the article reconstructs the term’s meaning within a modernization-theoretical frame of reference and then considers the evidence that multiple modernists hold against it. It finds that none of the observations cited by leading multiple modernists are able to challenge modernization theory, which can easily accommodate the kinds of difference invoked by its critics. East-Asian modernity in particular, to which both sides assign special weight for any test of modernization theory, appears remarkably similar to Western modernity when viewed through the lenses of this theory. At the same time, the literature on multiple modernities, despite pleading to take difference seriously, is silent about differences that large parts of the less-developed world exhibit vis-a-vis the West and East Asia in social-structural and cultural respects, indicating different degrees of modernization. The article concludes with a brief note on the differential weight of different kinds of diversity for different reference problems and a suggestion for a constructive resolution of the conflict between the two approaches.

Building hydrosocialism in Czechoslovakia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 610-633
Author(s):  
Jiří Janáč
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
The West ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
The 1960S

Throughout the period of state socialism, water was viewed as an instrument of immense transformative power and water experts were seen as guardians of such transformation, a transformation for which we coin the term 'hydrosocialism'. A reconfiguration of water, a scarce and vital natural resource, was to a great extent identified with social change and envisioned transition to socialist and eventually communist society. While in the West, hydraulic experts (hydrocrats) and the vision of a 'civilising mission' of water management (hydraulic mission) gradually faded away with the arrival of reflexive modernity from the 1960s, in socialist Czechoslovakia the situation was different. Despite the fact they faced analogous challenges (environmental issues, economisation), the technocratic character of state socialism enabled socialist hydraulic engineers to secure their position and belief in transformative powers of water.

scholarly journals Interrogating Western Modernity: Postcolonial Reflections on Occidental Claims and Action

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Kerner
Keyword(s):  
Western Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Gayatri Spivak ◽  
The Way

This paper deals with the way in which European modernity, and the West more generally, are reflected upon in the field of post- and decolonial theories, which generally question those representations of the European/Western tradition of thought and politics that only focus on their positive aspects, but differ greatly with regard to the way in which they frame and formulate their critique of this tradition. I discuss three major positions in this field. They are characterized by the rejection of Western modernity (Walter Mignolo), by a deconstruction of core text and principles of the European Enlightenment (Gayatri Spivak), and by attempts at a renewal and hence a radicalization of some of its core normative claims, particularly humanism (Achille Mbembe).

scholarly journals Envisioning Climate Change Adaptation Futures Using Storytelling Workshops

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6630
Author(s):  
Rachel Harcourt ◽  
Wändi Bruine de Bruin ◽  
Suraje Dessai ◽  
Andrea Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Adaptation Planning ◽  
The West ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Government

Engaging people in preparing for inevitable climate change may help them to improve their own safety and contribute to local and national adaptation objectives. However, existing research shows that individual engagement with adaptation is low. One contributing factor to this might be that public discourses on climate change often seems dominated by overly negative and seemingly pre-determined visions of the future. Futures thinking intends to counter this by re-presenting the future as choice contingent and inclusive of other possible and preferable outcomes. Here, we undertook storytelling workshops with participants from the West Yorkshire region of the U.K. They were asked to write fictional adaptation futures stories which: opened by detailing their imagined story world, moved to events that disrupted those worlds, provided a description of who responded and how and closed with outcomes and learnings from the experience. We found that many of the stories envisioned adaptation as a here-and-now phenomenon, and that good adaptation meant identifying and safeguarding things of most value. However, we also found notable differences as to whether the government, local community or rebel groups were imagined as leaders of the responsive actions, and as to whether good adaptation meant maintaining life as it had been before the disruptive events occurred or using the disruptive events as a catalyst for social change. We suggest that the creative futures storytelling method tested here could be gainfully applied to support adaptation planning across local, regional and national scales.

scholarly journals Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Global History ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times

This essay has been written to serve as a prolegomenon for a new journal in Global History. It opens with a brief depiction of the two major approaches to the field (through connexions and comparisons) and moves on to survey first European and then other historiographical traditions in writing ‘centric’ histories up to the times of the Imperial Meridian 1783–1825, when Europe’s geopolitical power over all other parts of the world became hegemonic. Thereafter, and for the past two centuries, all historiographical traditions converged either to celebrate or react to the rise of the ‘West’. The case for the restoration of Global History rests upon its potential to construct negotiable meta-narratives, based upon serious scholarship that will become cosmopolitan in outlook and meet the needs of our globalizing world.

scholarly journals The CSTO in new system of coordinates of the global international security. New calls and threats to security for the states of the CSTO and a form of response to them.

2016 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
A. A. Orlov
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
International Security ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
New System

Specifics of present moment of historical development is cardinal change of a geopolitical picture of the world. The period of partnership between Russia and the West came to an end. Partnership is succeeded by new structure of the international relations which will be constructed on much more pragmatic basis. At the same time it is obvious that the unipolar world was absolutely not effective. This world finally disbalanced all system of the international relations that was expressed in the number of the regional and local conflicts unprecedented before, and in return in the last two years of direct confrontation between Russia and the West.

scholarly journals PONDOK PESANTREN DAN PELAYANAN MASYARAKAT

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abd Muin M
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Education Institution ◽  
Education Services ◽  
System Type ◽  
Modern System

AbstractPesantren is convinced as the oldest education institution inIndonesia. From its historical development, there are three kinds of pesantrens which are being as the product of social change occured. This research did as response and effort to know more about any contribution od pesantren to society, especially dealing with religious education services. Supposedly, in dinamic society nowadays, pesantrens give services which are different amomg types. This can be proved by the results of this research that peantren salaf tends to be tafaqquh fiddin type, whereas pesantren khalaf and combination tend to a modern system type.

scholarly journals THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY OF THE ARAB-ISLAMIC WORLD

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Raul Ludovic Bereczki
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Perverse Effect

The Westernization of Islam, which began at least two hundred years ago, has two major consequences: a positive one, meaning the enlightenment of the elites which tried to reform Islam; and a negative one, "the perverse effect of contact with the West", as the experts often call it, which consists of the development of religious sects within the Muslim societies. The direct and striking conclusion, upon first analysis, is that Islamic fundamentalism is the product of Western modernity. Of course, the line of explanation has its origin in colonial times, seen as a major disappointment by those Muslims who believed in the benefits of a European-style modernity, and continues with the Cold War period, with the examples of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the mobilization of Islamist elements was beneficial in the fight against the Soviet enemy and the active proselytism practiced by the latter.

scholarly journals Cyclical theories of social change: Spengler and Toynbee

Sociologija ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-312
Author(s):  
Dragoljub Kaurin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
The West ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Historical Cycles ◽  
Proper Unit ◽  
Oswald Spengler

This paper is centrally concerned with discussing critically and rethinking the theoretical concepts put forward by Oswald Spengler in Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History. It focuses on the theoretical, heuristic and epistemological value of these theories in the era of renaissance of philosophic history in some quarters (see for example Graham, 2002) and cooperation between social sciences. Spengler is credited with the idea of historical cycles, rethinking of the progressivist view and discovering a radically different approach to the study of the human past, which is embodied in his idea of culture as the proper unit for historical and sociological study. However, some of his views proved to be intrinsically intellectually dubious, but on the whole, his was a major contribution to the study of social change. Arnold Toynbee on the other hand was more empirically and sociologically oriented, while Spengler?s views are more heavily philosophical. Toynbee partly developed his ideas rather consistently, but at the same time included many unclear and inaccurate points in his theory. Both authors can be rightfully considered to be classical authors in this field and both provided incentive for studies that cross-cut social sciences (philosophy, history, sociology). Moreover, Decline of the West and A Study of History are truly post-disciplinary works.

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