Postmodernity+or+radicalized+Modernity?


 * =Title= || "Post-Modernity or Radicalized Modernity?" ||
 * =Author= || Anthony Giddens ||
 * =Date= || 1990 ||
 * =Summary By= || deRaismes ||
 * =Summary= || I thought Giddens was most clear and explicit in his Table (p. 491) where he contrasted 8 characteristics of Post-Modernity with 8 commensurate traits of what he calls Radicalized Modernity.

In contrast to Postmodernists who believe contemporary institutional and technical developments cause the fragmentation and depersonalization of experience, Giddens focuses on the process of reflexivity as a means for the individual to navigate through and derive meaning from the complex structures of modern society.

Giddens equates modernity with a //Juggernaut// -- "a runaway engine of enormous power which, collectively as human beings, we can drive to some extent but which also threatens to rush out of control and which could rend itself asunder" (486). A juggernaut is not a single, unified entity but a collection of opposing dialectics that are in a constant sort of tension. He describes this as the ambivalent coexistence of feelings of ontological security and existential anxiety (486).

Giddens contrasts pre-modern settings with modern ones. In pre-modern times, life was experienced in a confined space and time (basically the boundaries within which you physically moved). However, modernity has allowed us access to virtual space and time, exponentially increasing our access to what is known.

Furthermore, knowledge is no longer //possessed// by certain individuals. Rather, it is commodified and embedded in structures and technology (expert //systems//) that we must trust but which can go wrong. **A current example is the nuclear reactor situation in Japan: while the knowledge to create these reactors stems from individuals, the product in a way goes beyond any group of people and transcends space and time. In this way, such technologies exemplify Gidden's idea of a juggernaut: we can control it to some extent, but really it can always break away from us and take us far away from where we want to be.

According to Giddens, this creates an environment of anxiety and uncertainty.

However, Giddens believes that the interplay between the disembedding elements of modernity (global) and our ability to be reflexive (local) creates a constitutive relationship whereby we have the *possibility* of agency, but never full control. ||
 * =Discussion points= || I have to admit that I am not sure I completely understand this. Thinking of this alongside Benhabib's article, do you agree that Post-modernists are too nihilistic and that we actually //do// possess some modicum of agency in our actions?

Do you believe that Modernity fragments or "dis-places" individual experience (the local) to be replaced by some generic, globalized experience? What does it mean to 'lose the self'? Cannot one argue that the parameters of 'self' definition have widened?

If Gibben's idea is to move beyond or fight complacent acceptance of Modernity and the globalized or fragmented and lost self, what might this mean for IR discourses that seek to normalize things like human rights and democracy? What would he say about the current 'crisis' in North Africa/Middle East? Might it be considered an example of Gibben's juggernaut [of Westernization] or is it Gibben's recursive relationship between locals and the structures of modern society? || = = = = = = = = = = = =

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