(Source: Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. P-283)

Modernism. A term referring to a movement within the arts in Western

societies between about 1880 and 1950, represented by figures such as Picasso

in painting, Eliot in poetry, Joyce in literature, Stravinsky in music and the

Bauhaus in architecture. It above all emphasized novelty, although by the middle

of the twentieth century it had almost become the orthodoxy. Some argue that it

has been superseded by postmodernism (q.v.).

Modernity. A term describing the particular attributes of modern societies. A

good deal of sociological work is based on the assumption of a sharp divide

between pre-modern and modern societies. There is considerable debate as to

the qualities of the two kinds of society as well as to when Western societies

became modem. Modernity is distinguished on economic, political, social and

cultural grounds. For example, modern societies typically have industrial,

capitalist (q.v.) economies, democratic political organization and a social

structure founded on a division into social classes. There is less agreement on

cultural features, which are said to include a tendency to the fragmentation of

experience, a commodification (q.v.) and rationalization (q.v.) of all aspects of

life, and a speeding up of the pace of daily life. There is disagreement about the

periodization (q.v.) of modernity, some writers associating it with the appearance

and spread of capitalism from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, some

with the religious changes of the fifteenth century onwards which provided the

basis for rationalization, others with the onset of industrialization in the late

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still others with cultural

transformations at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth

century which coincide with modernism (q.v.). Recently it has been argued that

contemporary societies are no longer modem but

postmodern.

Modernization. Modernization theory was a dominant analytical paradigm in

American sociology for the explanation of the global process by which traditional

societies achieved modernity, (i) Political modernization involves the

development of key institutions political parties, parliaments, franchise and

secret ballots - which support participatory decision-making. (2) Cultural

modernization typically produces secularization (q.v.) and adherence to

nationalist ideologies. (3) Economic modernization, while distinct from

industrialization, is associated with profound economic changes - an increasing

division of labour, use of management techniques, improved technology and the

growth of commercial facilities. (4) Social modernization involves increasing

literacy, urbanization and the decline of traditional authority. These changes are

seen in terms of increasing social and structural differentiation (q.v.).

Modernization theory has been criticized on two grounds: (i) modernization is

based on development in the West and is thus an ethnocentric model of

development; (2) modernization does not necessarily lead to industrial growth

and equal distribution of social benefits, since it is an essentially uneven process

resulting in underdevelopment and dependency (q.v.). Marxist alternatives to

modernization theory stress the negative aspects of modernity on traditional

societies.

Formation of Modernity-A Summary