Modernity (eBook)

Peter Wagner is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona.

Preface
Part I
Re-theorizing modernity
Chapter 1
Retrieving modernity's past, understanding modernity's present
Chapter 2
Changing views of modernity:
from convergence and stability to plurality and transformations
Chapter 3
Successive modernities:
crisis, criticism and the idea of progress
Chapter 4
Disentangling the concept of modernity:
time, action and problems to be solved
Part II
Analyzing contemporary modernity
Chapter 5
The link between capitalism and democracy reconsidered
Chapter 6
European and non-European trajectories of modernity compared
Chapter 7
Violence and justice in global modernity:
reflections on South Africa with world-sociological intent
Chapter 8
Towards a world-sociology of modernity
References

'Modernity as an organizing theoretical-interpretative device
has had an untidy and unruly history. No one recognizes this better
than Peter Wagner, and no one has done more to unpack, analyse,
tame, and repack its meanings and its claims. Modernity
extends his previous work significantly, and consolidates his
position as simultaneously the most creative and the most sensible
of writers of our time on the topic. He is especially to be
congratulated for referring to historical and comparative
actualities.'

Neil Smelser, University of California, Berkeley

'Peter Wagner's work is simply indispensable to those who
wish to conceptualize modernity in a truly global way that
challenges the Eurocentrism built into all classical writings on
the subject. Wagner is a high theorist but his openness to
questions of historical diversity remains exemplary.'

Dipesh Chakrabarty, The University of Chicago

'Peter Wagner's developing "world sociology of modernity",
outlined in this splendid book, is a major advance in his and our
thinking about modernity around the world. The book is also an
excellent and very readable summary of the current state of the
field.'

William Outhwaite, Newcastle University