A Sociology of Modernity (Peter Wagner)
Ambiguities of modernity: Project and experience (reality)
(narrating modernity) (self-image & practices / Hegel, discovery of the social)
Liberation and disciplination
Individual autonomy and its substantive/collective other
Core processes: Allocation of resources
Distribution of authority (power)
Cognitive representation: reflection and model setting
(imaginary signification)
Key analytical concept
Institutions Relatively durable sets of rules and resources – habitualized practices
Supra-individual but humanly created and continuously recreated (creation
and workings of social conventions)
Enabling & constraining (duality of structure > structure/agency)
Mode of
modernity
General features Allocative practices Distribution of
power
Cognitive
representation
Boundaries
Restrictive
liberal
1800-1880s
Socially dangerous
openness:
substantive
exclusions
Original accumulation of
economic capital
Imperial
bureaucracies
Universal Reason
Natural Order
Alienation
(Commodity) fetishism
Representations vs.
experience (ideal vs real)
Modern vs. traditional
(not-yet-modern)
Civilization vs. barbarism
(non-modern)
Class separation
Organized
1890s-1960s
Conventionalization
of practices
Centrality of work
(labor)
2nd
industrial revolution
Oligopolistic managerial
enterprise
Economic protectionism
Big hierarchical
organizations
Scientific management
(Taylorism)
Mass production-
consumption
Universal suffrage
The nation-state
National
homogenization
Mass parties
Social movements
Verrechtlichung
Fin-de-siècle
Irrationality
Mass society
Classification
Predictability
Functionalism
Behaviorism
Theories of
modernization and
development
(Scientific
management etc.)
Nationality
Political citizenship
Social classes
Gender
Extended
liberal
1970s-
present
De-
conventionalization
of practices
Supra-national entities
(Extra-national entities)
Erosion of nation-
state-based
powers
Global (porous)
regulations
Fragmentation
(disappearance) of the
subject
The end of the social
Liquid modernity
Postindustrial society
Knowledge society
Risk society
Network society/ANT
Late modern society
Postmodern society
Cultural sociology
Primordialization –
collectivization of
dispositional subjects
Trans phenomenon
 transgender
 transnationalism