Modernity

“Modernity” refers to a powerful set of cultural, political, economic, and spatial relationships that have fundamentally influenced the nature of social life, the economy, and the use and experience of time and space. The general characteristics of these relationships include an emphasis upon rationality and science over tradition and myth; a belief in progress and improvement; confidence in human mastery over nature; a focus on humanism, individuality, and self-consciousness; a close association to the birth and development of market capitalism; and a strong reliance upon the state and its legal and governmental institutions. Modernity is a historical process, incremental in its formation. Its legacies are powerfully embedded in the organization and experience of contemporary social life, and its various formations continue to mutate and evolve. Modernity is best grasped as a set of relationships that have been assembled in contextual and situated ways, and assumed much of their influence through their capacity to affect change in often divergent and geographically diverse contexts. While frequently contested, the geographical reach of modernity has become a globalizing phenomenon, and its impact on culture and human consciousness immensely powerful. Inasmuch as modernity is strongly associated with order and progress, the human experience of modernity can be unsettling and unpredictable. Thus, modernity is often regarded a paradoxical event, layered with complexity, contradictions, and diversity. Modernity is then an endurably powerful and instrumental force, but one that alternates between order and chaos, and is built upon a series of contradictions and paradoxes which are perhaps symptomatic of the nature of human transformation itself.