Die konstruierte Moderne. Thorstein Veblen und der Erste Weltkrieg

Abstract

According to some of the leading American social scientists at the beginning of our century (e.g. Charles H. Cooley, John Dewey, George H. Mead, William Thomas and, my example here, Thorstein Veblen) war and violence are mere relics of premodern societies and will gradually disappear. This utopia of a non-violent modernity obviously clashed with the outbreak of World War I. My main thesis is that this experience of violence — in spite of the great shock — did not lead to a revision of the evolutionary paradigm of progress. Veblen tried to formulate interpretative strategies that allowed him to maintain his faith in the civilizing character of modernity. Contrary to his view I suggest that the social sciences have to abandon this self-evident identification of modernization with the disappearance of violence in order to reach an adequate interpretation of modernity.