Social Theory and Regional Studies in the Global Age

10: World-Sociology Beyond the Fragments: Oblivion and Advance in the Comparative Analysis of Modernities

10 World-Sociology Beyond the Fragments Oblivion and Advance in the Comparative Analysis of Modernities Peter Wagner We are fated to “remember” what an earlier generation “forgot.” —Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies Until the late 1960s, modernization theory had provided sociology with a comprehensive and rather consistent approach to the comparative analysis of contemporary societies and their transformations over time from the alleged onset of modernity, in Europe and North America slightly more than two centuries ago, onward. This theory, however, was discredited by the combined onslaught of renewal in social theory, which reintroduced agency and creativity against any notion of self-propelled evolution; of the linguistic and microhistorical turns, which questioned the possibility of grasping large-scale social phenomena and their long-term continuity; and of postcolonial studies and dependency and world systems theory, which emphasized Western domination, instead of lags in “development,” as the cause for divergence in societal trajectories. Forceful as it was, the interim outcome of such critical debate was the abandonment of any comprehensive attempt at analyzing entire social configurations and their historical trajectories . Comparative-historical sociology was in disarray.1 By the end of the twentieth century, though, the concept of “multiple modernities” and its associated research program had been developed, 293 294 Peter Wagner pioneered by the late Shmuel Eisenstadt, to redress the situation. The novel approach returns to the comprehensive ambition of modernization theory by proposing to study societies comparatively across the globe over an even much longer time span, namely from the so-called axial age in the middle of the first millennium BCE onward. At the same time, it addresses constructively some of the main criticism directed against modernization theory. Against the assumption of a unilinear logic of evolution and, thus, convergence of societal trajectories, it posits the persistent diversity of modern social configurations. Against the postulate of Western normative and/ or functional superiority, it develops the idea of plural forms of modernity without a conceptually predetermined hierarchy of achievements. Against the idea of structural-functional determination, it posits the interpretative engagement of human beings with the world, producing cultural programs that give underlying interpretative patterns to social life. In sum, to put it very briefly, the current diversity of modernities is seen to emerge from the encounter of historical cultural collectivities—often referred to as “civilizations ”—with the commitment of modernity to autonomy and mastery as it most pronouncedly, but not without ambiguities, was elaborated in Europe. In its transformation toward modernity, each underlying cultural program retains some specificity, thus there is no reason to assume convergence, but rather persistent diversity. Rightly, this approach has been seen as reviving comparative-historical sociology, and several contributors to this volume have adopted and enriched it to turn it truly into a full-scale replacement of modernization theory as comprehensive societal analysis without inheriting any of the flaws of the earlier theorizing. Some more work, though, may be required toward this end. Despite its enormous achievements, the multiple modernities approach is not without problems. Most importantly, as I argued elsewhere (Wagner 2011a; see also Smith 2009), its concepts of “modernity” and “cultural program” presuppose too high degrees of commonality and continuity: commonality of interpretative patterns across often very large collectivities; and continuity of the underlying cultural program over very long stretches of time.2 As a consequence, dispute within a collectivity over its way of being-in-the-world as well as more than merely gradual transformations of interpretative patterns tend to be lost out of sight. In the process of successfully addressing some deficiencies of modernization theory, one may say, the multiple modernities approach created new problems—and this somewhat surprisingly by returning to old problems, such as the too uncritical adoption of “collective concepts” from wider debate, most centrally “civilization” and “modernity,” 295 World-Sociology Beyond the Fragments a move that had already been criticized by Max Weber (1973[1904]) more than a century ago. In other words, the multiple modernities approach combines in a peculiar way increased sophistication with undue simplification—may we dare say: progress with regress?—in the analysis of social configurations and their historical transformations. As a consequence, contributors to the current debate, as evidenced in this volume, sometimes have to remove obstacles that should not have been there in the first place. To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, and more importantly, to suggest more direct ways to raise the...