Europe and the emergence of modernity. The entanglement of two reference cultures

This article offers a theory of the notion ‘reference culture’ by taking as major examples modernity and Europe. Both constitute reference cultures and while different are closely related. A certain entanglement took place between the emergence of modernity and the formation of European culture whereby the latter came to be one of the main carriers of modernity. However, they need to be separated in that Europe, while being the first major expression of modernity, is not the only embodiment of modernity. Modernity can be termed a first-order reference culture and Europe a second-order one. While there have been many second-order reference cultures, the European one was an influential and powerful one, but it was also a temporary one. This article sets out the main features that define the specificity of Europe. Against accounts that emphasize a master narrative or an underlying cultural unity to Europe, it is argued that crucial to the making of Europe was the formation of modes of communication that enabled common practices to develop across a range of different cultures. In this way, it is argued, Europe consolidated as a consequence less of endogenous factors than exogenous ones. Important, too, was the mobile nature of European culture which facilitated translation into other cultures and which was also receptive to modernity. The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of other varieties of modernity and the global decline of the European mode

Pervasive Uncertainty in Second Modernity: an Empirical Test

Recent discussion of social change implies that, for a number of reasons, to do with globalisation, shifts in family life styles and labour markets, more critical attitudes toward the authority of officials and experts and greater awareness of possibilities and options, social life is more strongly affected by a sense of uncertainty. It also implies that uncertainty is pervasive and not specifically linked to fears about specific contingencies. It is associated with an orientation towards self-direction and a rejection of tradition and conformity. This thesis has been widely discussed, but rarely tested using quantitative data. This paper uses data from a recent national survey carried out by the ESRC Social Contexts and Responses to Risk network to show that uncertainty and security concerns are strong, but are in fact linked to traditionalism and conformity rather than to a critical and reflexive awareness. A high value is attached to self-direction, but this is linked to privileged social status rather than attitudes of pervasive social uncertainty. In general the values posited by recent discussion seem to be associated more closely with immediate social position than with the society-wide impact of social change.Uncertainty, Traditionalism, Reflexivity, Risk Society, Empirical Test

Beauty and Health: Anthropological Perspectives

This essay, written as a 'teaser' for an up-coming symposium, reflects on how human beauty can be understood from an anthropological and medical anthropological perspective. First, it considers how aesthetic and healing rationales can conflict or merge in a variety of medical technologies and health practices. Second, it discusses beauty in relation to the socioeconomic transformations of modernity and globalization. It suggests the need for a theoretical framework that departs from a strictly constructivist approach and views beauty as a distinct domain of social experience, not reducible to an effect of other inequalities

Ladybird landscape; or, what to look for in the 'What to Look For' books

The interlocking relationships between agriculture, nature, science and modernity underwent fundamental, far-reaching change in mid-twentieth century Britain. This article examines Ladybird's iconic, best-selling but under-researched ‘What to Look For’ seasonal natural history series, focusing particularly on the illustrations by the distinguished wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe and their relationship to the text by the biologist L. Grant Watson. Beneath their apparent simplicity, the ‘What to Look For’ books attempt an ambitious, forwards-looking synthesis between mechanisation and tradition, nature and livelihood that calls into question historiographical critiques (by Newby, Miller and Bunce, for example) of contemporary representations of the rural as nostalgic and evasive. The ‘What to Look For’ books quietly subvert some of the more distorting tropes of English landscape representation. People are shown going about their everyday work (in contrast to the ‘landscape without figures’ tradition) and modern farm machinery such as tractors and seed drills are also acknowledged and even celebrated. Tunnicliffe and Grant Watson sought to harmonize these potentially discordant elements; their vision of the rural was an inclusive one that accommodated working women, children and even to some extent ethnic diversity. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century attempts to imagine a positive relationship between rurality and modernity such as Ladybird’s were increasingly undermined by escalating ecological crisis

Wojna polsko-polska a kryzys postindustrialny

The author presents the Polish – Polish war issue by using the post-industrial crisis theory. He concentrates on the A. Toffler’s theory of the Second and Third Wave and on the term of Superfight. According to the author, the two sides of Polish – Polish war are the supporters of both the Second Wave and the Liquid Modernity. Polish – Polish war will be increasing while supporters of the Liquid Modernity accept the ideas accurate for the Third Wave

The Politics of Turkish democracy: İsmet İnönü and the formation of the multi-party system, 1938-1950

One of the most significant yet least known periods of modern Turkish history is that of Turkey's second president, Ismet Inönü. Following the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1938, Turkish politicians and intellectuals struggled to redefine Kemalist notions of modernity and democracy, Islam and secularization, the role of the state, and Turkey's place in the world. The Politics of Turkish Democracy examines Inönü's presidency (19381950), which developed amid the crises of World War II and the Cold War, global economic and political transformation, and economic and social change within Turkey. John M. VanderLippe analyzes the political discourse of the era and argues that Inönü was a pivotal figure who played the decisive role in Turkey's transition to a multi-party political system

Liberalism and Rationalism at the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1902–1903

This article reconstructs and analyzes a debate on “the crisis of liberalism” that took place in a prominent philosophy journal, the Revue de me´taphysique et de morale, in 1902–3. The debate was actuated by combiste anticlerical measures and the apparently liberal demand made by Catholics for freedom of instruction. Participants—all hostile to the church—sought to articulate a principled, rationalist liberalism that could respond to the needs of the republic in the post-Dreyfus era. Participants—including Célestin Bouglé, Dominique Parodi, Gustave Lanson, Elie Halévy, and Paul Lapie—balanced each in their own way the demands of rationalism, democracy, and modernity. The debate opens a window onto the transition between the Second Empire’s dissident, neo-Kantian, liberal republicanism and the antitotalitarian liberalism that Hale´vy and his student Raymond Aron would articulate in the interwar years

The philosophical foundation of modernity’s claims of rationalism and universalism

Kavramının içeriği konusundaki belirsizliğin aşılabilmesi, kavramın iki ayrı aşamada incelenmesiyle sağlanabilir. Birincisi, modernlik kavramı, yenilikçi ve ilerlemeci bir dünya görüşünü ifade etmektedir. Bu dünya görüşünün temeli beşinci yüzyılın sonunda, Yeniler-Eskiler ayrımının ilk belirdiği tarihte aranmalıdır. İkincisi, modernlik kavramı, akılcı ve evrenselci bir dünya görüşünü ifade etmektedir. Onyedinci yüzyılda Descartes’ın bilgi kuramıyla ortaya çıkan bu görüş, insanların doğayı, kendilerini ve toplumu algılayışlarını köklü bir biçimde değiştirmiştir. Bu makalede, modernlik kavramının içeriği, yukarıda belirtilen nitelikler dikkate alınarak, tarihsel ve felsefi olarak incelenmektedir. Amaç, modernliğin ne olduğunu ve neden eleştirildiğini daha açık ve anlaşılır hale getirmektir.To overcome the ambiguity about the content of the concept of modernity, the concept should be analyzed in two stages. First, the concept of modernity denotes the renunciation of the past, the appreciation of the new, and the celebration of the idea of progress. Second, the concept of modernity implies a rationalist and universalist worldview, whose rise was coincident with Descartes’ rationalist epistemology. This paper examines both historically and philosophically the content of the concept of modernity and intends to elucidate what modernity is and why it has recently been criticized

The structural transformation of embeddedness

The concept of embeddedness plays a central role in the segment of economic sociology and social theory which is inspired by the works of Karl Polanyi. But to the extent that embeddedness is understood in a substantialist manner, implying the existence of a unitary lifeworld, the desire for embeddedness is an impossible aspiration under modern conditions. Throughout the modern era it is however possible to observe the emergence of complex societal stabilization mechanisms, which serve as substitutes to traditional forms of embeddedness. The emergence of function specific cultures, in the form of, for example, legal, political and scientific cultures, establishing a ‘second nature’ in the Hegelian sense, is one example of this. Other examples are (neo-)corporatist institutions which fulfilled a central stabilising role in classical modernity and the kind of network based governance arrangements which fulfil a similar position in today’s radicalised modernity

Individualization and the aporias of modernity

Ulrich Beck’s musings on individualization have been described as a theory that provides a convincing explanation of what is happening in society, but has it seemed convincing because of its superior explanatory power or because it says what those who have been convinced wanted to hear anyway? This paper argues that, far from explaining more or better, the theory is haunted by intractable contradictions and paradoxes and that, at the root of these problems, is the sociological imagination itself, which insists on treating modernity as an empirical reality. This paper’s contention, by contrast, is that there is no such thing as modernity in society and history. It is an empty signifier, a phantom or, to use Beck’s own colourful terminology, a ‘zombie category’