Redefiniciones de la modernidad

Abstract

This concept of modernity needs to be redefined if it is to remain fruitful in sociological research and for a diagnosis of our time. This article suggests that such redefinition must entail a broadening of the temporal horizon and a widening of the spatial scope of what is referred to as modernity. The claim is made through a move in apparently the opposite direction: recognizing that the currently prevailing concept of modernity is rooted in the European history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the sociological tradition of defining modernity is re-read in this particular spatio-temporal context. Such an analysis helps identifying the current limits of the concept as well as the steps necessary for overcoming them.