Modernity Reimagined: An Analytic Guide

Description

Winner of the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Book Award in 2012, Chandra Mukerji offers with this remarkable new book an explanation of the birth and subsequent proliferation of the many strands in the braid of modernity. The journey she takes us on is dedicated to teasing those strands apart, using forms of cultural analysis from the social sciences to approach history with fresh eyes. Faced with the problem of trying to understand what is hardest to see: the familiar, she gains analytic distance and clarity by juxtaposing cultural analysis with history, asking how modernity began and how people conjured into existence the world we now recognize as modern. Part I describes the genesis of key modern social forms: the modern self, communities of strangers, the modern state, and the industrial world economy. Part II focuses on modern social types: races, genders, and childhood. Part III focuses on some of the cultural artifacts and activities of the contemporary world that people have invented and used to cope with the burdens of self-making and to react against the broken promises of modern discourse and the silent injuries of material modernism. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color photographs in its 10 chapters, MODERNITY REIMAGINED is not just an explanation, an analysis of how modern life came to be, it is also a model for how to do cultural thinking about today's world. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents in Brief Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface: Origins and the Analysis of Modernity Acknowledgments Part One History of Modern Social Forms 1 Modern Selves and Fashion Medieval Identity The Black Death Modern Subjectivity Burgundian Fashion and Moral Worth Italian Fashion and the Distant Self Spanish Fashion and the Christian Warrior Dutch Fashion and Consumer Culture French Fashion and the Theater of Power Fashionable Dress and Modern Selves 2 Communities of Strangers and Infrastructure Print Infrastructure and the Wars of Religion The Parisian Water Supply 3 Cultural Imaginaries and Modern States Immersive Theater and Political Spectacle Learning by Doing The Power of the Artisans The Modern State 4 Discursive Modernity and Global Industrial Capitalism Philosophical Modernities Modern Nation States Modern Cities The Experimental Self Part Two Genealogies of Modern Social Types 5 Geopolitics and Discourses of Race Monogenesis and Moral Differences (Cell A) Monogenesis and Degree of Civilization (Cell B) Polygenesis and Difference of Temperament (Cell C) Polygenesis and Racial Supremacy (Cell D) The Legacy of Racial Imaginaries 6 Property, Labor, and Discourses of Gender Gendered Differences Natural Man and Artificial Woman Gender, Property, and Labor Gender Culture and Industrial Labor 7 The Ascent of Man and Discourses of Childhood Modern Versions of Childhood Developmental Childhood Animals and Monsters The Problem of Modern Selves Part Three Popular Tools of Modern Life 8 Digital Games and Navigating Modernity Games as Pedagogical Tools Serious Games of Military Simulation Mazes and Serious Games of Life Digital Maze Games and Modern Subjectivity Mage and Minions Spider-Man 2 (3D) Monument Valley Games of Modern Life 9 Philosophical Media and Critiques of Modernity No Country for Old Men Einstein’s Wife Where the Heart Is Independence Day Thought Experiments and Philosophical Machines 10 Escape Routes and Restlessness Aesthetic Escape Routes Political Escape Routes Escaping Material Modernity The Restless Self and Grief Appendix: Teaching Resources Bibliography Acknowledgments for Figures Index