what are global/compared modernities?
What appears under the scholarly denomination of Compared Modernities is an interdisciplinary research field that examines how different societies and cultures have experienced and conceptualized modernity. It challenges the Eurocentric notion of a singular, universal modernity by exploring multiple, entangled, or alternative modernities that emerge in different historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts. In other words, it challenges Eurocentric historical narratives and proposes new ways of understanding modernity from a non-Western perspective. The concept of multiple modernities, arguing that modernity is not a singular, Western phenomenon but takes different forms in various civilizations, is sometimes associated with the name of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, who used such a term in an article published in 2000. Arguably, the idea of criticizing the supposed universality of modernisation and modernity as it took shape in France and other European centres, such as Vienna, had appeared in other, earlier studies. Nonetheless, it is only in the first decades of the 21st century that it consolidated into a consistent current of research.
The novelty of approach in Compared Modernities consists in rejecting the idea that modernization follows a single Western model. This approach explores how various regions: e.g., East Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East with such phenomena as al-Nahda in Egypt and in other parts of the Arab world. Shortly speaking, it studies the ways how multiple cultures and regions across the world have developed their own versions of modernity. These divergent modernities are shaped not only by colonial encounters and imperial histories, but also by transcolonial connections and non-colonial evolutions going on in the background of the dominant, colonial realities. This is why this approach privileges cultural flows, hybridization, and global interactions rather than tracing modernity to a single, European source.
This apprehension of modernity that is at the same time global and plural encompasses the study of Modernism as a current in literature and art that often deliberately associated distant inspirations and strived for global connections, such as those of Latin American and European Hispanic poets, or the European artistic revolutionaries and African sculpture. The appreciation of global Modernisms is also a chapter in history of ideas, examining how modernity has been theorized differently in various intellectual traditions.
The novelty of approach in Compared Modernities consists in rejecting the idea that modernization follows a single Western model. This approach explores how various regions: e.g., East Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East with such phenomena as al-Nahda in Egypt and in other parts of the Arab world. Shortly speaking, it studies the ways how multiple cultures and regions across the world have developed their own versions of modernity. These divergent modernities are shaped not only by colonial encounters and imperial histories, but also by transcolonial connections and non-colonial evolutions going on in the background of the dominant, colonial realities. This is why this approach privileges cultural flows, hybridization, and global interactions rather than tracing modernity to a single, European source.
This apprehension of modernity that is at the same time global and plural encompasses the study of Modernism as a current in literature and art that often deliberately associated distant inspirations and strived for global connections, such as those of Latin American and European Hispanic poets, or the European artistic revolutionaries and African sculpture. The appreciation of global Modernisms is also a chapter in history of ideas, examining how modernity has been theorized differently in various intellectual traditions.
selected bibliography in Compared Modernities
Bayly, C. A. (2004). The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Blackwell Publishing.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (2000). “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29.
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar (2001). Alternative Modernities. Duke University Press.
Scott, David (2004). Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Duke University Press.
Wollaeger, Mark & Eatough, Matt (eds.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms. Oxford University Press.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (2000). “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29.
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar (2001). Alternative Modernities. Duke University Press.
Scott, David (2004). Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Duke University Press.
Wollaeger, Mark & Eatough, Matt (eds.) (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms. Oxford University Press.
