Offering a vital reflection on the unity and diversity of the modern world, this important new book connects with the current debate on multiple modernities and argues that this notion can only be properly understood in a civilizational context. Johann Arnason presupposes the idea of modernity as a new civilization with its specific social imaginary, centred on strong visions of human autonomy but open to differentiation on institutional and ideological levels, as well as in changing historical contexts. The book begins by connecting this perspective to a distinctive framework of social theory, centred on the differentiation of economic, political and cultural spheres. Arnason goes on to deal with Communism as the most important alternative version of modernity, and with East Asian developments as a particularly complex and instructive case of interacting modernities. The book concludes with reflections on globalization theory and ways of reformulating it in light of the civilizational approach.
Johann P. Arnason is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University, and an editor-at-large of the journal Social Imaginaries. His many publications include Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (2003), Axial Civilizations and World History (ed. with S.N. Eisenstadt and B. Wittrock, 2005), The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. with K. Raaflaub, 2011), The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and its Interpretations (ed. with K. Raaflaub and P. Wagner, 2013), Social Transformations and Revolutions (ed. with M. Hrubec, 2016); and Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis (ed. with Chris Hann, 2018).
1. Introduction / 2. Modernity as a new civilization: Imaginary meanings and institutional contexts / 3. Origins and transformations: The question of successive modernities / 4. The Communist alternative and its exit paths / 5. East Asian variations / 6. Global constellations: The one and the multiple / Bibliography / Index
Arnason provides an erudite and profound meditation on modernity and its multiple forms. This is one of the most important books of our time, examining the lineages and various combinations of the economic, political and cultural spheres in the various passages to modernity. It provides powerful insights on economic transformations, state development and ideational contestation to generate a strikingly original analysis of the civilisations of modernity, including those that have failed and those that compete today.--Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent This book is a wonderful and indispensable guide through the ever-expanding discourse on modernity. Based on his stupendous knowledge of philosophical traditions on the one side and on his great expertise as a historical sociologist on the other, Arnason right now is certainly the most innovative and important scholar in linking theoretical and empirical arguments.--Wolfgang Knoebl, Hamburg Institute for Social Research and Leuphana University Lueneburg A masterpiece - this sober but engaging book offers a renewal of social theory and a fresh impulse for historical-comparative sociology at the same time. Essential reading for all those who look for a better understanding of the twentieth century as well as for the modernity, democracy and capitalism of our time.--Peter Wagner, ICREA Research Professor in Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Barcelona Johann Arnason is among the leading social theorists of our era. But in The Labyrinth of Modernity he argues that our era is not a single object to be theorized. Rather, it is a 'problematic', a cluster of connected but not unitary forms and themes, subject to change as tensions and possibilities are worked out. As always his thinking is stimulating and significant.--Craig Calhoun, Professor of Social Sciences, Arizona State University, USA This is a breathtaking and deeply insightful study of the formation of modernity in global perspective. It is historical sociology at its very best, a sweeping account of the major historical transformations of modernity. In this pathbreaking work, Arnason makes brilliant use of the notion of social imaginaries in the making of the modern world.--Gerard Delanty, Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought, University of Sussex
