Modernity as experience and interpretation
Subtitle: a new sociology of modernity
By: Peter Wagner.
Publisher: Polity
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780745642192; 9780745642185
Subjects: Social change; Social evolution; Social history -- 21st century
Description: "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 answers on its own."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-296) and index.