Modernity and Tradition: Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Contexts

Abstract

In approaching the question of the chronology of modernity in Latin America, I attempt to explore what might constitute an anthropological approach to modernity, particularly in Latin America but also more widely. Before I tackle that point directly, it is worth exploring briefly some definitions of modernity and its periodizations—which would presumably be the kinds of definitions and timescales that anthropologists would also use. Many commentators point to a lack of consensus on these matters. Smart (1990: 15) notes “the presence of a constellation of related terms, [and] a lack of specificity associated with the concepts employed, particularly in reference to their historical referents or periodisation” (see also King 1995; Therborn 1995). Noting that the term derives from the fifth-century Latin term, modernus, used to mark an official transition from the pagan to the Christian (and itself, I would add, derived from modus, measure or manner), Smart observes that the term is used thereafter “to situate the present in relation to the past of antiquity.” Citing Habermas, he says that the term appears “exactly during those periods in Europe when the consciousness of a new epoch formed itself through a renewed relationship to the ancients” (Smart 1990: 17). In an important sense, it is a relational term.