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Allan (2011: 3-6): In the Beginning there was Modernity
The words modern and modernity are used in a number of different ways.
- Sometimes modern is used in the same way as contemporary or up-to-date.
- Other times it’s used as an adjective, as in modern art or modern architecture.
In the social disciplines, there has been a good bit of debate about the idea of modernity.
- Some argue that we are no longer modern, others that we never were, and still others
that we are living in some different form of modernity, like liquid modernity.
Allan views modernity as: one that assumes a rational actor and an ordered world that
can be directed.
- There are also theories that indicate that the social world may not be ordered, but
rather, is a kind of chaotic system.
o More fundamentally, the social world may not be objective, but may simply be a
subjective attribution of meaning.
- Further, some critical theorists argue that this idea of modern knowledge is intrinsically
linked to power and is thus oppressive.
The making of Modernity
As a historical period, modernity began in the seventeenth century and was marked by
significant social changes:
- Such as massive movements of populations from small local communities to large urban
settings
- A high division of labor
- High commodification and use of rational markets
- The widespread use of bureaucracy, and large-scale integration through national
identities—such as “American”—to unite differences like gender, race, religion, and so
forth.
In general,
The defining institutions of modernity:
- Are nation-states and mass democracy, capitalism, science, and mass media;
The historical moments that set the stage for modernity:
- Are the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Reformation, the American and French
Revolutions, and the Industrial Revolution.
Modernity is more than a period of time; it’s a way of knowing that is rooted in the
Enlightenment and positivism.
- Enlightenment:
o The principal targets of this movement were the Church and the monarchy
o The ideas central to the Enlightenment were progress, empiricism, freedom, and
tolerance.
- Positivism:
, o The idea of progress
o The basic tenet of positivism is that theology and metaphysics are imperfect ways
of knowing and that positive knowledge is based upon facts and universal laws.
o The ideal knowledge model is science
Modernity’s two projects
Progress in modernity—and thus the intent of modern knowledge—is focused on two main
arenas: technical and social.
- The technical project of modernity is generally the domain of science.
o In science, knowledge is used to control the universe through technology.
§ Bastion for the technical project
- The Social project is less focused on science
o the institutional responsibility for the social project rests with the democratic state
Prior to Western modernity, the primary form of government in Europe was feudalism,
which was based on land tenure and personal relationships.
- These relationships, and thus the land, were organized around the monarchy with clear
social, hereditary divisions between royalty and peasants.
- The experience of the everyday person in feudal Europe was one where personal
obligations and one’s relationship to the land were paramount.
- Every person was keenly aware of his or her obligations to the lord of the land.
While the main identity available in feudalism was the subject, in a modern democracy
it is the citizen.
- Both science and citizenship are based on the idea of a new kind of person—the
supreme individual with the power to use his or her own mind to determine truth and to
use reason to discover the world as it exists and make rational decisions.
- This belief gave the Enlightenment its other name: the Age of Reason.
Giddens (2009: 61-67): The Politics of Climate Change
“Sustainable development”
The year 1972 was important in the history of environmental thinking, since it was the
date at which a landmark study appeared: The Club of Rome’s limits to growth.
- The work argued that our civilization is exhausting the resources upon which its
continued existence depends.
- In the same year a major UN conference on the ‘Human Environment’ highlighted the
importance of reconciling economic development with the more efficient use of
resources.
The term ‘Sustainable development’ was introduced in the 1987 report of the World
Commission on Environment and Development
, - Now referred to as the Brundtland Report since it was chaired by the Norwegian
ex-Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland.
Limits and Growth: Focused on the possibility that modern industry is using up its source
materials at an alarming rate, which cannot be maintained for much longer without major
change.
The Brundtland Report: Recognized that economic growth is necessary in order to bring
greater prosperity to the developing world.
- The Commission defined sustainable development as 'development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs'.
- The 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit endorsed a declaration setting out 27 principles of
sustainable development and recommended that every country produce a national
strategy to achieve these ends.
- A few years later the Treaty of Amsterdam embraced sustainable development as
integral to the aims of the EU, and a comprehensive Sustainable Development Strategy
was established in 2001.
‘Sustainability’ implies continuity and balance, while 'development' implies dynamism and
change.
- Thus, environmentalists are drawn to the 'sustainability to the 'sustainability' angle,
- governments and businesses (in practice, anyway) place the focus on 'development',
usually meaning by this term GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth.
William Lafferty and James Meadowcroft argue: 'Sustainable development indicates an
interdependent concern with: promoting human welfare; satisfying basic needs; protecting
the environment; considering the fate of future generations; achieving equity between rich
and poor; and participating on a broad basis in decision-making’.
- Such an all-encompassing list, however, surely empties the notion of any core meaning.
- It is an example of the way that sustainable development has become an all-embracing
concept to the extent that it has no clear analytical bite at all
- “Sustainable development” is more a slogan than an analytical concept
The World Economic Forum has elaborated an Environmental Sustainability Index,
which has been applied to more than 100 countries. Environmental sustainability is defined
in terms of five elements:
1. The condition of ecological systems such as air, soil and water
2. The stresses to which those systems are subject, including their levels of pollution
3. The impact of such stresses upon human society, as measured in terms of factors such
as the availability of food and exposure to disease
, 4. The social and institutional capacity of a society to cope with environmental hazards
5. The capacity to create stewardship of global public goods, especially the atmosphere
The idea of ‘development’. “Development” on its own may mean two things:
- It can simply mean economic growth, as measured by GDP, in which case it applies in
principle to all countries.
- It can also refer more narrowly to the economic processes that take people out of
poverty.
Over-development
We can legitimately talk of over-development as a possibility in the affluent societies. The
continued expansion of the economy may well bring benefits, but at the same time the
problems of affluence tend to pile up.
- The implication is not that economic growth has to stop, but that it should not be pursued
irrespective of its wider consequences.
- For these countries it is essential to create more effective measures of welfare than
GDP.
o GDP is normally defined as the total market value of all final goods and services
produced in an economy a given year.
o The formula includes personal consumption expenditures, gross private
domestic investment, government purchases and net exports.
o It was not invented as an indicator of welfare but has almost everywhere come
to be used that way.
Other sustainable index:
- Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW)
- Sustainable Society Index (SSI)
o Uses a wider range of environmental measures that the others, including resource
depletion affecting wetlands, forests, farmland and non-renewable raw materials
together with the level of carbon emissions and other potential causes of
environmental damage, such as the ozone-depleting materials.
o Also incorporated are indices such as income distribution, level of volunteering
and dependence on foreign assets.
o The results show similar conclusions to those of the ISEW: as measured by the
SSI, growth in most industrial countries has been stagnant since the 1970s.
Why are most countries so reluctant to use such measures in a prominent way?
There is an obvious answer, they show economic development in a far harsher light than
GDP does.
A government that seems to have a good record of economic success is suddenly shown
to have presided over a decline in welfare.
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