The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (13 page)

their selves. Despite the enormous variety of specific conceptualizations of

modernity, the great majority of them agree in identifying the key characteristic of modernity: human beings think of themselves as setting their own rules and

laws for their relation to nature, for their living together, and for understanding themselves.

Starting out from some such assumptions, however, most sociological analyses

of modernity aim at deriving a particular institutional structure from this double imaginary signification. And this is where they are led to profoundly miscon-ceptualize modern social life. Terms such as ``democracy'' or ``market'' certainly have one of their points of reference in the idea of the autonomy of human

action. But either they provide only such general indications as to be almost

devoid of content ± when, for instance, the political forms of former Soviet

socialism are taken to be expressions of collective autonomy and therefore as

democratic ± or, on the contrary, they are read in such a limiting way that the

current institutions of Western societies are considered to be the only adequate interpretation of the idea of autonomy. Thus, it was the error of large parts of the social sciences during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to mistake a

Modernity: One or Many?

39

historically specific interpretation of a probleÂmatique for a general probleÂmatique of modernity. Sociology tended to conflate the historical form of the

European nation-state with the solution to the political probleÂmatique, or, as it was often called, the problem of social order, which was expressed in the concept

``society.''

To put the conceptual problem in other words, the basic ideas, autonomy and

mastery, were taken to be of a universal character, and as such their socio-

historical emergence marked the distinction between modernity and ``tradition.''

The project of modernity, then, was the full permeation of the world by this

double imaginary signification. Man was to be fully autonomous and in com-

plete control over the world. Modern institutions, such as the democratic polity, the free market, and empirical-analytical science, in their ideal form would be

completely emptied of any inherited, traditional features. The progress in the

building of such institutions was a process of rationalization. There are many

different and overlapping formulations for what ultimately is one single set of

issues: modernity was seen as providing universal foundations that transcend all particularities of empirical situations. It can be considered as putting social

institutions on a procedural basis and thus overcoming the need for any sub-

stantive grounding. And modern societies thus become accessible to a structural

analysis, which underlines commonalities across societies, whereas cultural fea-

tures are what make individual societies distinct.

Very broadly, such thinking has guided most of the sociology of modern

societies, but it has repeatedly led it into dead ends. The basic flaw, to return to my formula above, is that it has been assumed that a modern set of institutions can be derived from the imaginary signification of modernity. The two elements

of this signification, however, are ambivalent on their own, and there is tension between them. In contrast, one needs to see the relation between autonomy and

mastery as instituting an interpretative space that is to be specifically filled in each socio-historic situation through struggles over the situation-grounded

appropriate meaning. Theoretically, at least, there is always a plurality and

diversity of interpretations of this space (see Skirbekk, 1993).

I attempted, as briefly mentioned, to provide historical illustrations for the

diversity of modernity. Focusing on Western Europe, I contrasted the West

European experience with the modernity of the USA, which at most times

appeared comparatively morè`liberal,'' and with the experience of Soviet social-

ism, which rather consistently appeared morèòrganized.'' Conceptually, the

analysis limited itself to employing basically two registers. The oscillation

between historically morè`liberal'' and morèòrganized'' modernities, first,

refers to the tension between individualist and collectivist interpretations of

autonomy. The second focus was on the relation between procedural and sub-

stantive interpretations of collective arrangements, and in particular on the

tension between the two main substantive resources for organizing European

modernity, the culturally and linguistically defined nation and the socially

defined welfare state (Wagner, 1994).

This conceptual limitation entailed that even this analysis could not fully

unfold an understanding of what may be called the cultures of modernity,

40

Peter Wagner

namely the variety of socio-historical interpretations of the double imaginary

signification of modernity and the resources such interpretations draw on and

mobilize. Within Western Europe already ± for example, between France and

Germany ± or within the more broadly defined ``West'' ± for example, between

Europe and the USA ± those resources are much richer and much more varied

than this attempt of mine showed (see now Wagner, 1999; Zimmermann et al.,

1999, for complementary analyses). Both richness and variety increase consider-

ably as soon as one focuses on the so-called non-Western societies. Under names

such as ``varieties of modernity'' or ``multiple modernities,'' a research perspective has recently developed that aims at analyzing the plurality of interpretations of the modern signification (Arnason, 1998; Eisenstadt, 1998). Such sociologies

of modernity break with any reasoning that associates modernization unequi-

vocally with Westernization. Without disregarding the problem of thè`specifi-

city of the West'' ± that is, the Weberian probleÂmatique ± interest is accordingly revived in the comparative-historical study of societal configurations.

Modernity as a Problematique

ProbleÂmatique

In terms of the analysis of entire societal configurations, this seems to me to be the adequate response, all qualifications in detail notwithstanding, to both the classic-modern representation of society as differentiated into functional subsystems (which is by far not yet fully abandoned), and the spreading discourse on

``globalization'' and `ìndividualization.'' The former sees modernity far too

unequivocally as based on the pillars of an empirical-analytic approach to

knowledge, a market organization of the economy, and plural democracy as its

political form. It disregards or underestimates the variety of situations and

experiences hidden behind those formulae and forecloses the possibility for

sociology to grasp that variety. The latter far too often assumes that the increasing density of relations of communication and transport necessarily leads to the overall convergence of societies. In addition, its theoretical emptying of the space between the individual and the globe imposes on singular human beings the

burden of continually creating and recreating their relevant connections to

others. Thus, it disregards the capacity of `ìnstitutions'' to provide relief from the need to act, or at least to guide action. Moreover, its skepticism toward

collective concepts is matched by a reverse faith in the individual human

being ± in theoretical, in normative, and in empirical terms. It can hardly

do other than lead into a view of the world shaped by individualist-rationalist

social theorizing and then realized by neoliberal policy design. In the former ±

systemic theorizing ± there is an a priori formula for the set of modern social

institutions; in the latter ± the rationalist-individualist one ± there are no

social institutions at all.

Both of these sociological representations of modern society are possible

interpretations of the double grounding of modernity in the ideas of autonomy

and mastery as guiding orientations for human social life. In different ways,

however, they both overlook ± or downplay ± the inextricable relation of tension Modernity: One or Many?

41

between the two parts of this self-understanding. In contrast, the approaches

discussed above as ``sociologies of modernity'' underline a basic openness of

modernity in terms of institutional forms, a constitutive openness that emerges

precisely from the ambivalence of, and tension between, these two basic ideas.

Over the past two centuries, sociology and social philosophy have mostly only

provided variants of attempts at intellectually handling the advent of modernity by reducing or denying this openness (Wagner, 2000, chapter 2); the point,

however, is to accept and think this very openness.

Now, one may object that openness as such is not a virtue. Accepting it as a

principle would lead to sociology losing its analytic grip on the social world. It may be possible to convincingly demonstrate that contemporary societies are

indeed not driven by technical-organizational requirements or that the rational

individual is not the typical form of human being. But does it not remain the task of sociology to develop overarching concepts for all kinds of societies and for

the beings that populate them? This is a question to which a full answer cannot

be given here, but I sketch out a preliminary approach (for some more detail see Friese and Wagner, 1999).

Since the wave of critique, at the end of the 1960s, of a sociological repres-

entation of society that tended toward both objectivism and determinism, ele-

ments of two alternatives have emerged. Within the tradition of social theory,

attempts have been made to bring human agency back in, as pursued in varieties

of ways by Margaret Archer, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Alain

Touraine, among others. Mostly from outside the social sciences proper, the

linguistic constitution of the social world has been made a key topic. And

importantly, the human sciences themselves have been analyzed in their form

of text and writing by authors such as Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida,

Michel Foucault, and Claude Lefort, among others. Taken seriously, both

strands demand to put the question of the intelligibility of the social world

explicitly on the agenda of the social sciences.

Unfortunately, and here I return to an earlier theme, these works have by and

large not had that effect at all. The first strand has basically subsided. Except for replacing the term ``modern society'' with ``modernity'' and ± vaguely and

broadly ± insisting on the shapability of the world, the call for agentiality has not considerably altered the ways of analyzing contemporary societies. Authors

from the latter strand have often been accused of making social analysis impos-

sible because of overloading it with concern for its epistemological and ontolo-

gical conditions of possibility. With few exceptions, they have been too little

interested in actual sociological analysis to actively refute that accusation. It is my contention that it is necessary to make and keep the concerns from both

strands as central in sociology.

Joining together historical-empirical analysis and philosophical reflection, I

advocate that such work on contemporary societal configurations cautiously

withdraws from the explanatory overambitiousness of the theories of (post-)

industrial society and of (late) capitalism. The historical-empirical observation of modernity's variety has its conceptual complement in some constitutive openness of modernity ± or of the project of modernity, if some readers prefer this

42

Peter Wagner

accentuation. It prefers à`weak'' substantive social ontology to the strong ones of earlier sociological analysis.

In this context, the change of terminology from ``modern society'' tò`modern-

ity'' becomes important. ``Modern society'' denotes a social order that gains its modernity from a particular structural and institutional arrangement. Modernity is here seen as a given and identifiable social form. ``Modernity,'' in contrast, refers to a situation, a condition, which human beings give themselves and/or in which they find themselves. This situation is in need of interpretation; and such interpretation can always be contested. The term `àutonomy,'' among other

connotations, also stands for the human capacity for unpredictable beginnings.

And the term ``mastery'' indicates that there is a relation of human beings to the world and to themselves that is always potentially problematic.

Under conditions of modernity, there is always a range of possibilities, even if some are unlikely. But if the history of modernity reveals both plurality and

possibility, can there be a theorizing that captures all the present and past

diversity as well as the possibilities that are open to the future without itself adopting some mode of plurality and possibility? This question has regularly

been answered in the affirmative. Or, even more strongly, the necessity of a single and stable theoretical viewpoint has been asserted, for otherwise neither firm

analysis nor critique would be possible. The view held here, in contrast, is that the historicity of modernity requires the development of modes of theorizing that are adequate to the variety of modernities and to the probleÂmatiques that the

modern condition poses for social life.

In other words, socio-political modernity is constitutively characterized by

probleÂmatiques that remain open, not by specific solutions to given problems.