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

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.

What is Early Modern History?: An Origin Story

What Is Early Modern History?, a volume in the Polity Press “What Is History?” series, is an origin story of the ways historians and those in other fields have seen – and contested – the roots of the modern world and have seen – and contested – whether the period between 1450 and 1800 forms some sort of coherent whole. This essay explains the book’s conceptualization and organization into various subfields, including economic, social, intellectual, cultural, gender, Atlantic world, and environmental history, and responds to the other essays in this forum. The essay and the book discuss the marks of an emerging modernity that have been advanced in different subfields, and ways these have been questioned, nuanced, and rethought. No matter what aspect of life historians investigate, they are likely to see the roots of modernity there, or of multiple modernities, varied and contingent on culture and historical circumstances.

Modern Japan and Multiple Modernities: A Case Study

Transformation studies should be a key topic for the comparative analysis of civilizations. Their most important task is to deal with the changes to world-views and cultural semantics inherited from axial traditions, changes resulting from the emergence of modern society and its radically innovative normative turn. To put it another way, the question relates to modern discursive reworkings of path-dependent figures of thought. In the context of such processes, discourses on identity intertwine with more or less critically oriented discourses on culture and society. For non-European countries, and very emphatically for Japan, Northwestern Europe is an almost exclusive domain of reference, notwithstanding eventual condemnations of European “decadence” or – as the case may be – capitalist contradictions. But when some critical distance from Europe is achieved, it combines easily with returns to a supposedly primordial native legacy, even with the illusory belief that this legacy can inspire a transformative creation of something new in human history. Such intellectual phenomena occur, with significant variations, across a broad political spectrum. This essay discusses a few exemplary Japanese cases.

The Role of Education, Religiosity and Development on Support for Violent Practices among Muslims in Thirty-Five Countries

Despite widespread scholarly interest in values and attitudes among Muslim populations, relatively little work has focused on specific attitudes popularly thought to indicate anti-modern or anti-liberal tendencies within Islam. In this article, we use data from the Pew Research Center from 2008-2012 to examine support for violent practices among Muslims in thirty-five countries. Support for violent practices is defined by three questions on the acceptability of killing apostates, the stoning of adulterers, and severe corporal punishment for thieves. Using multilevel models that capture country-level variability, we analyze the relationship between support for violent practices and education, religiosity, and development. In general, we find that support for violent practices is less common among individuals with more education and less religiosity and who come from more developed countries. However, when we examine variation across countries, we see evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the association of education and religiosity with support for violent practices. We find that education is more liberalizing in more liberal countries and in less developed countries. The effects of religiosity are also related to country-level context but vary depending on how religiosity is measured. Overall, the variation we observe across countries calls into question a civilizational approach to studying values among Muslim populations and points to a more detailed multiple modernities approach.

The role of education, religiosity and development on support for violent practices among Muslims in thirty-five countries

Despite widespread scholarly interest in values and attitudes among Muslim populations, relatively little work has focused on specific attitudes popularly thought to indicate anti-modern or anti-liberal tendencies within Islam. In this article, we use data from the Pew Research Center from 2008-2012 to examine support for violent practices among Muslims in thirty-five countries. Support for violent practices is defined by three questions on the acceptability of killing apostates, the stoning of adulterers, and severe corporal punishment for thieves. Using multilevel models that capture country-level variability, we analyze the relationship between support for violent practices and education, religiosity, and development. In general, we find that support for violent practices is less common among individuals with more education and less religiosity and who come from more developed countries. However, when we examine variation across countries, we see evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the association of education and religiosity with support for violent practices. We find that education is more liberalizing in more liberal countries and in less developed countries. The effects of religiosity are also related to country-level context but vary depending on how religiosity is measured. Overall, the variation we observe across countries calls into question a civilizational approach to studying values among Muslim populations and points to a more detailed multiple modernities approach.

Maturation and Personhood in Wellington, New Zealand and Shizuoka, Japan

<p>This thesis is a comparative study of maturation and personhood in two modern societies: Wellington, New Zealand and Shizuoka, Japan. It examines the interrelations between cultural and ideological constraints and pragmatic choice in the maturation of young people. It explores how concepts of personhood and 'becoming a person' affect the decisions and choices made by young people of senior high school age and upward as they negotiate transitions toward fuller social personhood. It demonstrates how modernity carries different implications for young people in Wellington and Shizuoka despite large areas of commonality. In terms of the current debate concerning the nature of modernity, it is supportive of multiple modernities. The thesis argues that 'becoming adult' is central to young people's maturation in Wellington whereas in Shizuoka maturation involves sequential transitions through time. The different perceptions of 'adulthood' in Wellington and of transitional change in Shizuoka are analysed in relation to a number of themes. These themes include ideas of the self/person, the significance of gender, concepts of independence, and relations between self and others; the importance of school, part-time work, tertiary education, employment and careers; and orientations toward the family, leaving home, marriage and the future. The thesis argues that the distinctiveness of each society may be found at the interface between sociocultural knowledge of what makes a person and the construction of self. It suggests that the direction of transformations in each society results from choices and decisions that attempt to reconcile socoiocultural ideals and personal desires. This approach is one that leads to a better appreciation of fundamental differences between modern societies.</p>

Maturation and Personhood in Wellington, New Zealand and Shizuoka, Japan

<p>This thesis is a comparative study of maturation and personhood in two modern societies: Wellington, New Zealand and Shizuoka, Japan. It examines the interrelations between cultural and ideological constraints and pragmatic choice in the maturation of young people. It explores how concepts of personhood and 'becoming a person' affect the decisions and choices made by young people of senior high school age and upward as they negotiate transitions toward fuller social personhood. It demonstrates how modernity carries different implications for young people in Wellington and Shizuoka despite large areas of commonality. In terms of the current debate concerning the nature of modernity, it is supportive of multiple modernities. The thesis argues that 'becoming adult' is central to young people's maturation in Wellington whereas in Shizuoka maturation involves sequential transitions through time. The different perceptions of 'adulthood' in Wellington and of transitional change in Shizuoka are analysed in relation to a number of themes. These themes include ideas of the self/person, the significance of gender, concepts of independence, and relations between self and others; the importance of school, part-time work, tertiary education, employment and careers; and orientations toward the family, leaving home, marriage and the future. The thesis argues that the distinctiveness of each society may be found at the interface between sociocultural knowledge of what makes a person and the construction of self. It suggests that the direction of transformations in each society results from choices and decisions that attempt to reconcile socoiocultural ideals and personal desires. This approach is one that leads to a better appreciation of fundamental differences between modern societies.</p>

Religious spaces as continually evolving modernities: Forms of encounter with modernity in Christian Orthodoxy and Islam

The present study deals with the encounter with modernity in two neighbouring religious spaces: Christian Orthodoxy and Islam. Relying on Eisenstadt’s theory about multiple modernities and on its further developments by Thomas Mergel and Kristina Stoeckl, Islamic and Christian-Orthodox dynamics in relation to the challenges of modernity are examined under two aspects: first, the decoupling between religion and culture as elaborated by Olivier Roy, and second, the development of modernist and fundamentalist currents as phenomena of modernity. The study contributes to the sketching of the profile of Islamic and the Christian-Orthodox modernities, pointing both to some of the commonalities and the differences, and inquiring the nature of their distinctiveness. Further on, it contributes to the theoretic discussion on modernity and its various, contextually shaped forms, shedding new light on the relation between the trigger of social changes and their processual character.Contribution: Inside the Christian Orthodox and the Islamic religious space the decoupling between religion and culture and the development of modernist and fundamentalist currents are analysed as markers of the second modernity that arises from the encounter of the worlds mentioned with the challenges of the first modernity.

[Rev.] Arnason J. The Labyrinth of Modernity: Horizons, Pathways and Mutations. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2020

The main subject matter of Johann Arnason’s book is multiple modernities. The author discusses various theoretical approaches towards modern societies and offers an original conceptualization of historical processes. He analyzes patterns of modernity in the fields of economy, politics and culture, as well as sequences of various modernity types. Particular attention is devoted to social transformations in the Eurasian region. Arnason carefully examines the formation and historical dynamics of the Soviet and Chinese versions of “alternative” communist modernity. Finally, he discusses global modernity and the need to reconsider its trajectory in light of communist experience.