A Sociology of Modernity : Liberty and Discipline

ISBN-13: 9780415081863 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 267 str.

Peter Wagner

Opis

Confusion reigns in sociological accounts of the current condition of modernity: from the end of the subject to a new individualism; from the dissolution of society to the re-emergence of civil society; from the end of modernity to an other modernity to neo-modernization. This book offers a sociology of modernity in terms of an historical account of social transformations over the past two centuries, focusing on Western Europe but also looking at the USA and at Soviet socialism as distinct variants of modernity. A fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the double notion of liberty and discipline in its three major dimensions: the relations between individual liberty and political community; between agency and structure; and between locally-situated human lives and widely extended social institutions. Two major historical transformations of modernity are distinguished, the first one beginning in the late 19th century and leading to a social formation that can be called organized modernity; and the second being the one that dissolves organized modernity.

Recenzje

`An outstandingly rigourous and, if simply for this reason alone - much needed, point of reference for the post-modernity/late-modernity debate. ... It is a grand narrative of the indispensable kind whose carefully crafted insights and justifications deserve to be widely and seriously reflected upon, to be challenged or consolidated.' - Publication Unknown 24.2.95

`Wagner's historical sociology of modernity makes fascinating and highly illuminating reading.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Times Higher

`Closing the book, the reader is wiser than at the moment of opening it, with that kind of wisdom which only a responsible thinker can confer.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Times Higher

Spis treści

Part I Principles of modernity 1 Modes of narrating modernity 2 Enablement and constraint: Understanding modern institutions Part II The first crisis of modernity 3 Restricted liberal modernity: The incomplete elaboration of the modern project 4 Crisis and transformation of modernity: The end of the liberal utopia Part III The closure of modernity 5 Networks of power and barriers to entry: The organization of allocative practices 6 Building iron cages: The organization of authoritative practices 7 Discourses on society: Reorganizing the mode of cognitive representation Part IV The second crisis of modernity 8 Pluralization of practices: The crisis of organized modernity 9 Sociology and contingency: The crisis of the organized mode of representation 10 Modernity and self-identity: Liberation and disembedding  Part V Towards extended liberal modernity? 11 Incoherent practices and postmodern selves: The current condition of modernity

O autorze

Peter Wagner (Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute University of Trento, Italy)