Late Modern World Research Articles

The Age of the Lonely Crowd: E.H. Carr and Peter F. Drucker on the Fragility of Modern Life

E.H. Carr's political thought has recently evoked renewed interest among the scholars of international studies. For situating Carr within his own historical settings, these scholars have illuminated his intellectual affinities with Karl Mannheim and other contemporaneous thinkers. What remains unexamined is Carr's relation with Peter. F. Drucker, to whom Carr gave special acknowledgement in the preface of The Twenty Years' Crisis. This article intertextually reads their discourses for uncovering Carr's historico-philosophical awareness. Comparing his The Twenty Years' Crisis and Conditions of Peace with Drucker's The End of Economic Man and The Future of Industrial Man, it will be clear that, for both authors, (1) the crisis derived from the failure of traditional political philosophy, (2) no effective alternative was available in their time, and (3) the nature of the crisis was the loss of meaning in life. Carr's search for a sound moral foundation will prove to be relevant in this unstable late-modern world.

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

Book Review: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

Book Review: To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

Taking a Step Away from Modernity: Reconsidering the New Sociology of Childhood

This article explores the conditions under which the sociology of childhood was created, suggests some of the problems encountered in this effort and points to some possible remedies. It is argued that the construction of a sociology of childhood entailed a double task. First, space had to be created for childhood within sociological discourse. Second, the increasing complexity and ambiguity of childhood as a contemporary, destabilized phenomenon had to be confronted. It is argued that, whilst a space for childhood has been created, this was accomplished largely in terms of modernist sociology, a discourse that was increasingly unable to deal adequately with the destabilized world of late modernity. An important aspect of this problem is apparent in the reproduction within the sociology of childhood of the dichotomized oppositions that characterize modernist sociology. Three of these oppositions (agency and structure, nature and culture, being and becoming) are explored. It is suggested that moving the sociology of childhood beyond the grip of such modernist thinking entails developing a strategy for ‘including the excluded middle’. Inter alia this may necessitate greater attention to the interdisciplinarity and the hybridity of childhood; being symmetrical about how childhoods are constructed; attending to the networks, flows and mediations of its production, and the co-construction of generational relations.

To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity in the late modern world

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive-and provocative-answers to these questions. Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls faithful presence-an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of faithful presence...Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be. Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.

TOTAL PARENTING

In this essay, Richard Smith observes that being a parent, like so much else in our late-modern world, is required to become ever more efficient and effective, and is increasingly monitored by the agencies of the state, often with good reason given the many recorded instances of child abuse and cruelty. However, Smith goes on to argue, this begins to cast being a parent as a matter of "parenting," a technological deployment of skills and techniques, with the loss of older, more spontaneous and intuitive relations between parents and children. Smith examines this phenomenon further through a discussion of how it is captured to some extent in Hannah Arendt's notion of "natality" and how it is illuminated by Charles Dickens in his classic novel, Dombey and Son.

HOW EVANGELICALS FAILED TO CHANGE THE WORLD

A review of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, by James Davison Hunter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and sacredness in Sápmi and northern Norway

A case study of sacred landscapes in the contemporary era, the article deals with a particular mountain and its rise to sacredness. Fuelled by plans of ski-slope development, the fate of Tromsdalstind caused a lively debate in local newspapers, as well as a report issued by the Sami Parliament. The report connected sacredness to Sami traditions in the past and to current laws on the protection of Sami cultural memories. This, then, was a case of sacredness constructed outside the context of organized religions and ongoing religious traditions, as well as a case of using secular laws as the primary basis for definitions of sacredness. Through this process, love for the mountain appears to have grown deeper and more religious, both for the Sami as well as for other northern Norwegians. Neither more nor less authentic than those of the past, these concepts of sacredness belong to the late modern world of law culture, nature romanticism, and to pan-indigenous spirituality as a “religion” in the making.

Foucault's Concept of Power and the Global Discourse of Human Rights

This article carries out a Foucauldian analysis of the global discourse of human rights. In the spirit of Foucault's genealogy it identifies a historical discontinuity in the development of human rights between the Cold War period, when human rights were a heavily contested concept, and the late modern world in which human rights are becoming a form of global standard whose validity is less and less questioned. Using Foucault's understanding of the way power is exercised within discursive structures and knowledge/power configurations, the article argues that in the late modern world human rights constitute a global norm with reference to which agents are evaluated and increasingly evaluate themselves. Power may be exercised over those forms of agency that do not conform to this norm by other agents, and at the same time, we witness more and more situations in which there is no such coercion and yet agents find it necessary to alter their behaviour and declare their adherence to human rights. The article also seeks to extend Foucault's framework in order to explain the emergence of the global human rights discourse. It thereby complements a Foucauldian analysis with a political economy approach which, it is argued, helps us enhance the Foucauldian framework which suffers from the separation of discourses and politics from the economy.

Radically Orthodox, Reformed, and Pentecostal: Rethinking the Intersection of Post/Modernity and the Religions in Conversation with James K.A. Smith

AbstractThe Radical Orthodoxy [RO] movement has been gaining momentum in the theological academy. Its most recent spokesperson, James Smith, attempts to extend the RO vision in dialogue with the Dutch Reformed tradition. Clearly, the central features of ‘Reformed’ RO empower a kind of prophetic engagement with the various domains of late modern society. At another level, however, the globalizing features of our time mean that the dominant pagan deities are not just secularism, nihilism, or capitalism, but also those of other religions. At this level, even a ‘Reformed’ RO may be unable to sustain an engagement with the plurality of mythoi operative in the public square. Rather than undermining the Radically-Reformed project revisioned by Smith, I propose a ‘pneumatological assist’ and argue that a more robust pneumatological theology (suggested but undeveloped by Smith) enables the kind of engagement that is required in our religiously plural late modern world.

“The Unbearable Lightness of Cleaning”: Representations of Domestic Practice and Products in Good Housekeeping Magazine (UK): 1951–2001

In this paper we begin to open the black box that constitutes the organisation of domestic cleaning and consumption in the latter half of the twentieth century. We focus specifically on change and continuity in the manner in which cleaning practices and cleaning products are represented in the UK woman's magazine Good Housekeeping, in the late modern period. After a discussion of the modern history of cleanliness, we proceed with a rationale for why this magazine was chosen for our analysis, followed by a summary of our methodology. We then argue that three phases of representation may be delineated in the time period we investigated. The first phase, which is apparent in the 1951 and 1961 issues, we have named “pride in domestic practice” and it covers a period when, what we call “the women's lobby”, speaks in a uniform voice about the tasks of the housewife and the purpose of domestic cleaning. The second phase, manifest in the 1971 and 1981 issues, is termed “domestic dreaming”, and it heralds a period when Good Housekeeping calls its readership to dream about the potentials of a transformed consumer culture. The third phase, which is evident in some respects in 1981, but which is more clearly present in 1991 and 2001, we have called “modern advising in a late modern world”. During this period, Good Housekeeping settles into a new role as a modern advisor of cleaning products and practices within the context of a world that poses significant complexities. Our discussion also focuses on how three values of cleanliness; that associated with germs, aesthetics and efficiency/ease are present in the magazine. Our analysis is contextualised in relation to the cultural silencing of cleanliness in this period and related to social and cultural changes associated with feminism and consumer culture.

Languages in a globalising world

Jacques Maurais and Michael A. Morris (eds.), Languages in a globalising world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 345. Hb. $75.00.This is an ambitious volume keyed to some of the most acute concerns of our time in regard to the linguistic condition of the world of late modernity. This collective effort is structured in such a manner as to offer the widest possible coverage of languages, broad geographical areas, and politico-economic blocks. It consists of 21 chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Figures and tables provide useful supplements to the analytical parts of several chapters. It is unfortunate that the bulk and density of this work does not allow for a chapter-by-chapter review here.

From Iron Cage to Pigeon House: The Birth of Reflexive Authority

In recent years, Weber’s image of the ‘iron cage’ has been challenged by the sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. They claim that this image no longer applies to the late modern world we are entering. In the late modern era, individuals, institutions and organizations have become or will become reflexive, and as a consequence the iron cage of rationalization is opening. In this article, the authors largely subscribe to the theories of Beck and Giddens though formulate two objections. First, they demonstrate that the theories each illuminate only one level of social life in late modernity and should be combined. Second, they claim that in the theories of Beck and Giddens a search for a possible integrating phenomenon is largely missing. By combining the theories they disentangle a new form of integration, which may emerge in late modernity. This new form of integration they dub ‘reflexive authority’.

Class and parenting in accounts of child protection

In this paper, the idea of ethnograpies of hegemony is taken up as a reflexive orientation in research which addresses the complexity of forms of domination in late modern society also by trying to come to terms with the situatednes of interactionally-established interview data. Following a number of methodological remarks on the establishment of a ‘native point of view’ as well as a number of observations on the data trajectories (tribulations and triangulations) which mark this particular discursive ethnography, the analysis goes on to concentrate on the ways in which case categorisation is ‘spoken’ through social class in one particular account of child protection. As an exercise in ‘classifying the classifiers’ (Bourdieu 1992: 242) 2, the analysis highlights how professional and private talk about social problems is implicated in class-based subjectivities and involves (displaced) representations of class? However, much depends here on what we mean by ‘class’ when referring to a contemporary context such as the Flemish/Belgian field of child protection. If hegemony then counts as a historicising interpretative move which highlights <a> the interwovenness of domain - and profession-based discourses of social problems with discourses of class and <b> the contextualisation of particular sense-making repertoires, then it is just as much about the situational contingencies under which class and domination becomes speakable in a particular way. This, I suggest, is where ethnography becomes all-important - as an investigative strategy and as an epistemology of dialogic engagement with social theory and contemporary analyses of the late modern world.

Rethinking identity in modern Japan: nationalism as aesthetics

1. Approaching the Question of Japanese Identity and Nationalism 2. 'Overcoming Modernity': Towards an Aesthetic Politics of Identity 3. Uneasy with the Modern: the Postwar Revival of the Modern and the Return of Dissent 4. The Age of Rapid Economic Growth and Romantic Resurgence - Mass Society and the Erosion of Popular Politics and the Social Imaginary 5. Back to Identity: 'Postmodernity,' Nihonjinron, and the Desire of the Other 6. Japan in the 1990s and Beyond - Identity Crises in Late Modern Conditions 7. Japanese Nationalism in the Late Modern World

The Square of Intimate Citizenship: Some Preliminary Proposals

This exploratory paper suggests some emerging arenas of public debate across the personal life‐from 'test-tube babies' to 'lesbian and gay families'‐which when taken together may be captured by the term 'intimate citizenship'. This suggests a plurality of public discourses developing about how to live the personal and intimate life in a late modern and global world where we are often confronted by an escalating series of choices and difficulties around intimacies. A framework of four key issues is suggested for fuller examination. This entails the changing nature of the public sphere; the growth of culture wars and the need for dialogue; the narrativisation process and grounded moralities; and the links to global intimacies.

Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and Federalism

Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and Federalism

Public Islam and the Problem of Democratization

As in much of the late modern world, Muslim societies in recent years have seen an unprecedented resurgence of religious issues and organizations into public affairs. The resurgence has given special urgency to the question of whether this revitalized Islam is compatible with democracy and civic pluralism. Drawing on comparative materials and an in-depth discussion of recent events in Indonesia, the world's largest majority-Muslim country, this article presents a preliminary analysis of the relationship of Islam to democratization. The article argues that most Muslims continue to look to their religion for principles of public order as well as personal spirituality. The political ideals Muslims derive from their tradition, however, are not immutable, but vary in a manner that reflects competing views as to how Muslims should respond to the challenges of the late modern world. Some Muslim activists invoke the idea of Islam as religion and state to justify harshly coercive policies and the fusion of state and society into an unchecked monolith. But there is also an emerging democratic or civil-pluralist tradition in the Muslim world that seeks to recover and amplify Islam's democratic endowments. Its supporters argue that, by concentrating vast power in rulers' hands, the Islamic state only increases the likelihood that their religion's high ideals will be subordinated to authoritarian intrigues. As events in Indonesia illustrate, this clash of cultures between promoters of a Muslim civil society and democracy and supporters of an anti-pluralist Islamic state is likely to remain a key feature of Muslim politics for some time to come

Gandhi, freedom, and self-rule

Chapter 1 Introduction: Gandhian Freedom and Self-Rule Chapter 2 Is there a Gandhian Definition of Liberty? Chapter 3 Gandhian Autonomy in the Late Modern World Chapter 4 Gandhi's Originality Chapter 5 Gandhi and Human Rights: In Search of True Humanity Chapter 6 What is Swaraj? Lessons from Gandhi Chapter 7 Gandhi and Hindutva: Two Conflicting Visions of Swaraj Chapter 8 Gandhi: Gude to a Better Human Future

Early modern concepts for a late modern world: Althusius on community and federalism

Who was Althusius, and why is the work of a seventeenth- century political theorist important in modern times? Johannes Althusius (1557-1638) was a political theorist and a combative city politician who defended the rights of small communities against territorial absolutism. He designed a system of politics in which sovereignty would be shared and jointly exercised by a plurality of collectivities, spatial as well as social, on the basis of mutual consent and social solidarity. Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World places Althusius in the context of his times and explains the main features of his political thought. It also suggests, perhaps most significantly, why his theories continue to resonate today. Hueglin's use of sources is thorough and scrupulous. He has worked in depth in Germanic scholarship and this access to German-language sources, some of which are almost unknown to the English-speaking world, provides a new interpretation of Althusius' theory. With its emphasis on pluralized governance, negotiated compromise instead of majority rule, and the inclusion of the economic sphere into the political, Althusius' theory belongs to a countertradition in Western political thought. Although it was written at the beginning of the modern age of sovereign politics, it applies to today's search for a post-sovereign system of politics.