Shaping the Discourse on Modernity

Abstract

In this opening article, the editors of History, Culture and Modernity provide an overview of recent debates relating to "modernity", inviting prospective authors to participate in a reflexive conversation on this contested concept, which is, at the same time, a practical reality. Modernity is on endless trial, suggesting evaluation and permanent criticism. The most disputed aspects of modernity range from its supposedly secular character and its strong connection to western science. Responses to these and other conspicuous features of modernity include Romanticism and various critiques of Enlightenment rationality, but also artistic modernism and the postcolonial attack on Eurocentrism. New approaches to the study of modernity try to accept its ambiguity, rather than reaffirm the conventional binary approach, and pay more attention to global and experiential aspects. A cultural history of modernity can help to expand such new approaches.

Reading Australian modernity: Unsettled settlers and cultures of mobility

“…As research on these home‐grown modernities proliferated, the notion of a singular modernity was replaced by a new pluralist paradigm. The language of ‘multiple modernities’, ‘alternative modernities’ and ‘colonial modernity’ overtook the scholarly landscape (Barlow, ; Burton, ; Chakrabarty, ; Eisenstadt, ; Gluck, ; van Eijnatten et al, ; Wittrock, ). This process was not without its critics.…”

Introduction: Christian modernities in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century

“…5 Early in the 2010s, a founding article in a journal dedicated to understanding 'modernity' similarly highlighted that concept as not only 'contested' but also a description of a condition 'of evaluation, of permanent criticism, of intellectual debate': modernity was a notion that was even-here citing a 1990 phrase from Leszek Kołakowski-'on endless trial'. 6 The 'endless trial' of modernity, in a sense, continued into the early twenty-first century, as scholars from a variety of disciplines have deemed the concept to be not only hopelessly outdated but also damaged by its association with an inherent 'Eurocentrism' and a triumphalist-specifically 'Western'vision of liberal, capitalist and technocratic 'progress'.…”

“…In short, what binds these articles together is an approach that takes modernity, as it has been put, as 'a discourse and a practice demanding constant revaluation, rather than as the inevitable outcome of a historical development'. 26 All of the articles show that Christians-no less than any other social group and, indeed, more than has often been appreciated-have played leading roles in such 'constant revaluation'.…”

“…What, precisely, 'modernity' means and when, precisely, it began (and, possibly, when it ended) have been matters of much discussion. 2 At the same time, despite doubts about the utility-or, indeed, the morality-of concepts such as 'modernity' and 'modernisation', some scholars have come to the opposite conclusion, reasserting that this term describes something important about a recognisably distinct time period. 'Modernisation' is, likewise, again being revised and receiving renewed interest, as some scholars try to piece together a unified theoretical model to explain what can no longer be considered a merely 'Western' social condition but rather an increasingly global phenomenon.…”

Mosque and Reproduction of Arab Identity in The Hadrami Community in Betawi

“…(Noupal 2013) In fact, according to Joris in his research stating that aspects of modernity range from secular characteristics. (Van Eijnatten et al 2013) Religious teachers in mosques must not interpret or took laws from the Qurān especially those that did not have the requirements of interpretation or ijtihad. He cited the authority of the well-known commentary ulama, al-Suṯṯī, in al-Itqān that "The interpretation was determined by the ulama commentary".…”