Two Aspects of Polycentric Modernity

Abstract

This chapter returns to the issue of global modernity’s polycentricity. It focuses on two aspects. The first concerns the relative decline of the West as a result of rapid modernization in the non-Western world, especially in East Asia. This development brings to a close several centuries of Western global dominance and supremacy. The second aspect concerns a development that has received more attention in the social scientific literature but remains inadequately theorized. This aspect has to do with key characteristics of modern society that unfold their full potential only as this society expands globally, namely the tendency of its various subsystems to emancipate themselves from the fetters of national sentiment, interest, regulation, and hence to evolve according to their own logics and rationalities.