Multiple Modernities in the Framework of a Comparative Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

In this chapter I would like to analyze the implications of the concept of multiple identities from the point of view of paradigms of social and cultural change, especially the evolutionary one. The notion of ‘multiple modernities’ denotes a certain view of the contemporary world — indeed of the history and characteristics of the modern era — that goes against the view long prevalent in scholarly and general discourse (Eisenstadt, 2000, 2002a, 2002b; Roniger and Waisman, 2002). It goes against the view of the ‘classical’ theories of modernization and of the convergence of industrial societies prevalent in the 1950s, and indeed against the classical sociological analyses of Marx, Durkheim, and (to a large extent) even of Weber, at least in one reading of his work. They all assumed, even if only implicitly, that the cultural program of modernity as it developed in modern Europe and the basic institutional constellations that emerged there would ultimately take over in all modern izing and modern societies; with the expansion of modernity, they would prevail throughout the world (Eisenstadt, 2002a).