The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (11 page)

seemed to happen was gradual change without major ruptures or unpredicted

events. In striking contrast to the first half of the century, in which there were wars and revolutions of global dimensions and the establishment of novel sociopolitical configurations, notably socialism and fascism, the second half can be

described in terms of the institutional consolidation of liberal-democratic market societies.

Sociology and Modernity

Assertions of Hobsbawm's kind are always contestable. How do we measure the

magnitude of social change? Neither historians nor sociologists have a com-

pletely convincing answer to that question. But there is a conceptual question in the background of such assertion that needs an answer ± or at least a reflective discussion. Sociologists have long tended to theorize contemporary Western

Modernity: One or Many?

31

societies as ``modern societies.'' One can even take it to be the founding

assumption of sociology that there was a rupture with earlier modes of social

organization by which societies were put on an entirely different footing. The

Reformation and the scientific, industrial, and democratic revolutions are

the major points of reference, and even though the precise dating is debatable,

at the very least the sum of all those transformations put modern society firmly into place. Importantly, this thinking went with the additional assumption ±

which often remained implicit, but was sometimes spelt out ± that there could be no further major social transformation. When ``modern society'' was established, a superior form of social organization was reached that contained all it needed to adapt successfully to changing circumstances. If Hobsbawm was right about the

second postwar period, then something was wrong with the sociological view of

modern society.

What are the issues that are at stake? Assuming we accept his diagnosis of a

recent major social transformation, there are several possibilities of interpretation. First, one can see this transformation as a rather comprehensive one that

touches more or less all societies. This generates two further conceptual options.

Either one can see this change as a major adaptation of modern society to new

circumstances, or one can see it as the end of modern society and its transformation into something else. We shall see that both options have indeed been

embraced. Second, there is the possibility that this transformation does not

occur everywhere or not everywhere in the same way. Such an interpretation

would cast doubt on the general applicability of the concept ``modern society.''

Third, and radicalizing this idea, this transformation ± which after all was

unexpected by sociologists ± may call for a reconsideration of the very way

sociology approached the study of contemporary societies. Was thè`modernity''

of modern society ever understood?

Initially, our latter suspicions are confirmed by some peculiar developments in

terminology. At some point some quarter century ago, the sociology of entire

contemporary societal configurations ± sometimes somewhat infelicitously

called ``macro-sociology'' or alsò`political sociology'' ± lost its vocabulary.

Around the end of the 1960s, it disposed of ± as far as this can go in a pluralistic discipline like sociology ± a coherent set of concepts, centered on terms likèìndustrial society'' (Clark Kerr and others) or ``modern society'' (Talcott Parsons and others). In this framework, ``modernization'' and ``development'' were

the terms for social change, which was thought to be as predictable as the

structure of society was analyzable. From the 1970s onwards, however, in the

light of observed changes that had not been foreseen, sociologists became

inclined to add prefixes likè`post-'' or qualifying attributes likè`late'' to their key concepts, thus implicitly giving up on all theoretical coherence. For a certain time during the 1980s, the diffusion of the term ``postmodernity,'' even more

radically, signaled a momentous transformation by suggesting that the very core

of Western self-understanding, namely being ``modern'' ± which, etymologically

speaking, means nothing but being up to the exigencies of one's time ± was in

question. And even worse (for sociology), the term carried with it the implication that the very intelligibility of the social world was cast into doubt.

32

Peter Wagner

Sociologists' response to this challenge was the introduction of the term

``modernity'' into their vocabulary. In this chapter, I try to show that what is at stake in this enigmatic terminological shift is the very possibility of analyzing entire societal configurations and their historical transformations. To provide a bit more of a background, I first sketch in some more detail the intellectual

developments over the past three decades. Then I discuss the questions intro-

duced above, namely: Was there a major social transformation? If so, to what

new societal configuration(s) has it led? And what do these considerations entail for our understanding of ``modernity'' and ``modern society''?

From

From ``Modern

``Modern Society'' through ``Postmodernity'' tò`Modernity'':

``Modernity'': a Short Intellectual History

Sociology in general, and also the sociology of entire societal configurations at issue here, had its heyday during the 1950s and 1960s. Its knowledge was in broad demand, and the writings of its proponents exuded an enormous air of confidence

and an exceptional degree of epistemic certainty about having firmly grasped that which held the social world together (Wagner, 2000, chapter one). The strength

and coherence of this conceptual grip on the contemporary social world can easily be read from textbooks of the time. The greatest testimony to this period is

probably the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences of 1968, edited

by David Sills, but prepared under the guiding influence of Talcott Parsons.

In this view, the USA and some West European societies had reached the

stage of `àdvanced industrial society'' or ``modern society.'' Other societies

still had to undergò`modernization'' and ``development,'' leading up to where

the more advanced societies already were. Major upheavals or ruptures were

not envisaged, and all societies had basically embarked on the same historical

path. The power of this interpretation, as exemplified in Parsons's work,

stemmed not least from the fact that it managed to combine a broad

empirical-historical observation on institutional stability in the West with two explanatory elements, which in their combination appeared unbeatable. As

elaborated ± somewhat too affirmatively ± by Jeffrey Alexander (1978), Parsons

started out from the voluntarism of human freedom, which historically led to the differentiation of social institutions. In a second step, he aimed at showing that those differentiated institutions would functionally interrelate to form an overall social system that was superior to others in all respects. He thus produced a

sociologized version of the Enlightenment view that human affairs were self-

regulating once freedom and reason were permitted to have their way.

Although not everyone agreed with this affirmative view, the major alternative

approach or critical view painted a picture with similarly clear contours. From

the 1940s to the 1960s, critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School held that the reign of instrumental reason had succeeded in containing all social change in `àdministered society'' (Theodor W. Adorno) or `òne-dimensional

society'' (Herbert Marcuse). And Marxist social theory, which revived during

the 1960s and 1970s, saw ``capitalism'' or ``late capitalism'' (Ernest Mandel,

Modernity: One or Many?

33

Claus Offe, Nicos Poulantzas, and others) as neither harmonious nor stable, but

contradiction-ridden. Mostly, however, these critical theorists argued that if

capitalism could not control those contradictions, some form of socialism

would evolve.

As stable as this double ± affirmative and critical ± image of contemporary

Western societies still appeared by the mid-1960s, objections to it began to

accumulate. I will just mention three important ones. First, historical sociologists were able to demonstrate that theorists of modern society had neglected historical information or downplayed its significance to an utterly unacceptable degree to arrive at their story of smooth and linear development. As Reinhart Bendix

(1967, p. 312) put it, ``Seldom has social change been interpreted in so manage-

rial a fashion, while all contingencies of action are treated as mere historical variations which cannot alter thèlogic of industrialism'.''

Second, events in Western societies themselves led to doubts about the inher-

ent and unshakable solidity of those social orders. On the one hand, ``1968''

became and remained a symbol for the possibility of major unrest to emerge

almost without any warning. The protest movements of the 1960s certainly did

not achieve the major political revolution some of their protagonists were

hoping for. But the significant cultural transformations of the ensuing decades

± most prominently a new understanding of selfhood, sometimes called ``new

individualism'' ± are often traced to this period. On the other hand, the similarly unexpected economic crisis of the early 1970s led to a questioning of the

sustainability of the postwar economic model. Standardized mass production

was accompanied by growing mass consumption patterns and a mode of govern-

ment regulation of the economy that mechanically protected capitalist expansion

by fiscal and monetary policies. This model seemed to allow for projections of

stable economic growth that stretched far into the future. As of 1975, those

projections were no longer even worth the paper on which they were printed. It

is not only that crises and recessions recurred; economists and economic soci-

ologists also detected increasing signs of the transformation of the economy

away from mass production toward ``flexible specialization,'' and away from

nationally controllable economic flows toward ``globalization.''

Third, the observation of those and other, more gradual developments, such as

the changing composition of the workforce, started to demand revisions of the

prevailing sociological image of society. The first major response came to be

known as the idea of a transition from `ìndustrial society'' tò`post-industrial

society.'' This transition was characterized by a shift from industry to the service sector as the major employer and to scientific-technical knowledge as the major

productive force. Although this new theory of post-industrial society initially

tried to match its predecessor in terms of explanatory tools and precision, it

never achieved the same coherence. Some of its proponents, such as Alain

Touraine (1969), even made it a key point that post-industrial society is per-

petually changed by the activity of social movements. Sociological analysis had

to change in tandem with social change, in his view.

The power of these various objections to the predominant sociological way of

representing contemporary society was brought together in a short report `òn

34

Peter Wagner

knowledge,'' commissioned by the University Council of QueÂbec, that did not

initially appear destined to become a classic (Lyotard, 1979). The philosopher

Jean-FrancËois Lyotard started the report, which he chose to give the titlè`The

postmodern condition,'' much like the kind of diagnosis of post-industrialism

that was quite common by the late 1970s. As he went on, however, the radical

nature of his analysis became clear. He criticized both affirmative and critical ways of conceptualizing thè`social bond'' as ``no longer relevant'' (p. 14).

Alternatively, he proposed to restart the analysis of social relations as based on language games and without any presuppositions about societies as functionally

coherent or inherently contradictory entities. Later, he added that this view

indeed questioned the possibility of subsuming the multiple events of human

history under one single meta-narrative. Similarly, he argued, the translat-

ability from one language game to another in social life could no longer be

presupposed; instead, it had to be made a topic of investigation itself (Lyotard, 1989).

Among sociologists and social theorists, this proposal has largely been con-

sidered as unacceptable. The critique of epistemology and of ontology that it

presupposed was seen to make any analysis of entire social configurations

impossible. If postmodernity meant the questioning of any possibility of provid-

ing a valid representation of the social world, then a postmodern sociology

would be a contradiction in terms. Trying to domesticate the proposal some-

what, it has also been suggested that Lyotard is essentially diagnosing a major

transformation of Western societies and is seeing this transformation as much

more profound than it is analyzed to be in the theory of post-industrial society.

That is why the term postmodernity is necessary, and a sociology of postmoder-

nity ± unlike postmodern sociology ± then becomes a feasible project (see, for

example, Bauman 1992, p. 111). The problem with this interpretation is that it

far too easily divides the debate between one position, which holds that soci-

ology can basically just carry on, and another one, which holds that everything is anyway in vain.