Modernity

Each of the primary thinkers discussed above had their own particular takes on what it meant to be modern. To Weber and Durkheim, modern was coterminous with rationalization, while Marx viewed it as being connected to capitalist commodity production. Gandhi’s relationship to the modern was skeptical. The issue of modernity and modernization will be discussed below in hopes of coming to a suitable understanding of the modern. This is of utmost importance for a comparative study, as it will ensure that the objects of inquiry, the German and Indian secondary education systems, will not end up in a kind of power relationship. The significance of this very point will become all too evident. Although the ideas presented here can be traced back to the four thinkers outlined above in the form of a kind of genealogy, this section will rely on thinkers who appeared on the scene subsequent to the “classics”, with the possible exception of Gandhi, who came a bit later than Durkheim, Marx and Weber. It is not the ambition of this work to re-categorize the ideas presented below; for the sake of clarity, the author will refer ideas to the broader categories explored above, namely functionalism, interpretivism, materialism and post- or anti-modernism.

To begin, modernity can be defined openly as: “the modes of experiencing that which is new in modern society” (Frisby 1990: 58). Whether the driving force behind modernity is or was rationalization, capitalist enterprise, imperialism or some mixture of the three is not central to explaining the concept. David Harvey (2000), in his article “Time-Space Compression and the Rise of Modernism as a Cultural Force”, argues that an important shift in imagining space and time occurred in Europe and North America as a result of the financial crisis of 1847-1848, causing novel philosophical speculation regarding conceptions of space and time. More to the point, the Enlightenment notion of time, which held that time moved forward linearly, had earlier displaced the ecological conception of time adhered to by traditional societies, and was in turn displaced by more confusing notions of time, including what Harvey refers to as the cyclical notion of time related to business cycles and Marx’s idea of alternating time (Harvey 2000: 134-135). The new times that emerged became significant components of modernity or, in Harvey’s words: “The certainty of absolute space and place gave way to the insecurities of a shifting relative space, in which events in one place could have immediate and ramifying effects in several other places” (135). Harvey sets out to trace the effects of this change in understandings of time on economic, cultural and political life, with a particular focus on the ways in which literature and the fine arts adjusted to this shift

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(135-138). Although his insights are most interesting for fans of modern literature and the arts, it is worth considering whether his “critical juncture” – 1847-1848 – is entirely appropriate.

Empirically, it is verifiable that new art forms less concerned with realism and convention emerged subsequent to his critical juncture, but the totalizing force of his analysis, namely that this confused conception of time was universalized and engendered worldwide colonial and imperial expansion (Harvey 2000: 137), is problematic. To add some perspective to this analysis, it is rather more likely that the novel conception of time Harvey investigated was not representative of a new epoch but rather a confounding of the different notions of time, namely traditional time and Enlightenment time. This, together with the founding of nation-states beginning toward the end of the 18^th Century, holds the key to understanding the relationships between time, space and the modern.

Benedict Anderson (2003), arguing at the crux of a similar historical intersection, notes that nation-ness:

…was the spontaneous distillation of a complex ‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces; but that, once created, they became ‘modular,’ capable of being transplanted…to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations (4).

Anderson was first and foremost interested in the rise of the nation-state (“imagined communities”) as a framework for collective life. For him, the rise of print capitalism and the connected technological developments it fostered gave birth to new imaginations of life and time. “The convergence of capitalism and print technology…created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic form set the stage for the modern nation”

(46). The novel conception of time that emerged from this was the idea of simultaneous time.

A daily or weekly newspaper allowed members of the community to conceptualize what was going on in far off places and even to imagine what other members of the community were doing at that very moment, namely reading the newspaper, too.

Setting these conflicting notions of time together into a relation helps to clarify the relationship between modernity and time and points the analyst in a direction regarding a possible non-chimeric universal framework for discussing it. On the one hand, new

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conceptions of time emerged in the mid-18^th Century which challenged the Enlightenment notion of progressive time, referred to as a “crisis of representation” (Harvey 2000: 134). On the other hand, modernity can be viewed as an intersection of capitalism, print technology and the construction of nation-states. “All of the above” is perhaps the only answer in this case if one wants to understand modernity, meaning that the manifestation of the modern is not simply a shedding of one notion of time and the adoption of a new one. Instead, the notions of ecological time, Enlightenment time, cyclical time, alternating time and any other extant time concepts are mixed together to various degrees and then confronted with the notion of simultaneity. Each society, each individual even, carries with it its own mixture of different understandings of time. Instead of speaking of modernity in the singular, it is necessary to speak of multiple modernities.

The idea of multiple modernities is not new, but it contains an approach which is illuminating for any comparative study. Sudipta Kaviraj (2002) recognizes the contribution of the classical approach to modernity yet enumerates the reasons why: “we should expect modernity not to be homogeneous, not to result in the same kind of social process and reconstitution of institutions in all historical and cultural contexts” (137-138). The first reason provided is that “modernity is a massive alteration of social practices…” most particularly in the fields of “…political power (state), economic production, education, science, even religion” (138). Again, this notion is hardly ground-breaking, but it is useful to keep in mind the idea that modernity has primary spheres of influence and should not simply be deduced from material relations.

At this point, and in line with Harvey (2000), the notion of culture should be added to Kaviraj’s short list. The second reason why modernity cannot be homogeneous and thus must be understood in terms of a plurality is that modernity is a necessarily open and multiple process and interacts differently within different historical processes (Kaviraj 2002: 139). To put it more succinctly, modernity as a program has different effects on different places, times and ways of experiencing the world, a point similar in nature to the one made by the author about different kinds of time. The final reason is that modernity breeds reflexivity, and that new means of arriving at effective forms of collective action are constantly being sought and implemented as part of modernity’s program (Kaviraj 2002: 140).

Modernity, understood as rationalization or as capitalism writ large, has very little explanatory power in and of itself; rather, it is the intersection of these “modern” concepts

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with larger social, cultural, economic and historical processes that define modernity. It follows, then, that modernity cannot logically be a destination but can only serve as an ingredient in understanding the social world. Kaviraj (2002) concludes his discussion with a very revealing question: “…the logic of modernity shows a diversifying and pluralizing tendency in Europe itself. How can its extension to different cultures and historical circumstances produce obediently uniform historical results?” (160).

More to the point, and providing a tidy transition to the objects of inquiry, is S.N.

Eisenstadt’s (2002) own conclusion regarding the challenges of examining multiple modernities: “The idea of multiple modernities presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world – indeed to explain the history of modernity – is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstruction of a multiplicity of cultural programs” (2). These myriad cultural programs, however, have manifested themselves in diverse organizational and institutional patterns, governing a wide range of activities, including mass education and

“individualistic orientations” (2).²⁰

Even it if could be established that the relative power of nation-states has been eroded, it must be recognized that methodological nationalism, while problematic, is appropriate for the present discussion. According to Véronique Bénéï (2005): “Yet the fact that the state may appear in some domains to no longer be a relevant entity…should not obfuscate its still inescapable role in a variety of realms impacting on the lives of its citizens”

(7). It is entirely unavoidable to focus on states when discussing education systems, because education is still a public good and the regulation of this good falls to the states, even when it comes to private education. What is more, discussing modernity or multiple modernities without focusing on the state would be an exercise in futility, because the rise of the modern is intimately linked with the rise of the nation-state.²¹

20 Before discussing the point, it is necessary at this juncture to remark on a somewhat troubling and related concept, namely methodological nationalism, which is designated as: “the assumption that the

nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer and Schiller 2002:

302). This approach, although it refers specifically to migration research, is tangentially related to Michael Mann’s thesis that globalization is eroding the power of the nation-state (Mann 1997).

21 This does not mean, however, that the rise of the post-modern is intimately tied to the demise of the nation-state.

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Taken together, this means that modernity includes divergent understandings of time, which are emblematic of larger epistemological changes, yet are manifested in diverse institutional structures, most of which lead back to the nation-state, the organizational form in which modernity is both embedded and expressed. It seems all too appropriate to not speak of modernity in the singular, for no single nation-state can be said to have perfectly reflected the modern in any stage of its history. It would be nice to simply wish away or ignore the pathologies of the nation-state. As it stands, they must be interrogated. Now that modernity has been sufficiently defined or at least signposted, the critical gaze can be turned toward its operationalization, namely modernization or development theory.