Multiple Modernities

Multiple modernities, a concept that emerged at the end of the 20th century, represents a new paradigm in understanding the contemporary world. It moves forward from the “classical” analyses of Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, whose works implicitly assumed that the social, economic, and political processes taking place in Europe around the 18th century, such as urbanization, industrialization (capitalism), secularization, rationalization, the emergence of the nation-state, and bureaucratization were not only unique but also universal. The concept of multiple modernities was developed to refute mainstream sociological thought around the 1950s—particularly modernization theories. These theories conceived that the peculiar features of modernity in the West (the United States and some parts of Europe), such as individual emancipation and future-oriented progress together with the development of democracy, technology, and advanced communications media, appeared as goals that all nations will eventually achieve.

The notion of multiple modernities was developed by many social scientists during the last decades of the 20th century. However, it is generally recognized that the most important work was by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1923–2010). He stood up against theories that suggested that the world was going to collapse due to the confrontation of modern and not modern societies—that is, Western and non-Western societies. He also criticized works that suggested “the end of history” and those who considered that modernity was an incomplete program. He believed that developing an idea of multiple modernities was the best way of understanding contemporary societies and, as a consequence, modernity as a process of “constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs.” That is why he suggested that the notion of multiple modernities implies making a distinction: Modernity is different from Westernization. This means that there are distinctive patterns of modernity, with a capacity for self-correction, throughout the world. Finally, Eisenstadt sustained that institution building, protest, and the relation between centers and peripheries caused the acceleration of the transposition of the project of modernity to non-Western (non-European) societies.

To sum up, the notion of multiple modernities implies that modernity itself, as it was conceived in the mainstream sociological approaches in the late 19th and 20th centuries, can be reduced to a phenomenon only present in some parts of western Europe in a specific period of time. It also implies that the diverse and complex non-Western societies are not exceptions to modernity but are modern in themselves.