10.1515 - Zfsoz 1994 0301

© F. Enke Verlag Stuttgart Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Jg. 23, Heft 3, Juni 1994, S.
165-197 165
M odem, Anti, Post, and Neo:

How Social Theories Have Tried to Understand the “New World“ of
“Our Time“1
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Department of Sociology, U.C.L.A., 405 Hilgart Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90024, USA
A b s tra c t: This article links the cognitive contents of the different theoretical perspectives that have emerged since
World War II to their meaning-making functions, and links both to their social origins broadly understood. It views
social theorists as intellectuals who try to understand the crisis of their times. In doing so, they draw not only upon
the cognitive resources of earlier social theories but upon the structured traditions of cultural codes and narratives.
In order to explain the new and often unnerving experiences of their changing societies, intellectuals develop binary
oppositions whose constructions of sacrality and profanity allow them to place the present in relation to a simplified
past and future, thus creating “history.“ Social theory is also built upon changing narrative forms, genres of collec
tive heroism, romantic individualism, tragedy, comedy, realism, and irony. The author suggests that in recent years
the comic and ironic perspectives of postmodern theory have been challenged by a neo-modern perspective that is
more heroic and romantic and more confident about solving the “problems of our time.“
History is not a text, not a narrative, master or other revolved most centrally around the industrializa
wise. [Yet] as an absent cause, it is inaccessible to us ex tion of society. The response to Inkeles was appre
cept in textual form, [and] our approach to it and to the ciative from many of the senior members of the au
Real itself necessarily passes through its prior textuali- dience, skeptical from the younger. Wallerstein re
zation. Fredric Jameson
sponded to Inkeles in a manner that pleased the
younger generation more. “We do not live in a
Sometime during the mid-1970s, at the annual modernizing world but in a capitalist world,“ he
meeting of the American Sociological Association, proclaimed (1979: 133), asserting that “what ma
a major debate erupted around modernization the kes this world tick is not the need for achievement
ory that crystallized a decade of social and intellec but the need for profit.“ When Wallerstein went on
tual change. l\vo speakers were featured, Alex In- to lay out “an agenda of intellectual work for those
keles and Immanuel Wallerstein. Inkeles reported who are seeking to understand the world systemic
that his studies of “modern man“ (Inkeles/Smith transition from capitalism to socialism in which we
1974) had demonstrated that personality shifts to are living“ (1979: 135, original italics), he literally
ward autonomy and achievement were crucial and brought the younger members of the audience to
predictable results of social modernization, which their feet.2
1 Drafts of this essay were delivered at colloquia orga

nized by the UCLA Center for Comparative Social 2 As I remember the event, and it was certainly an ev
Analysis; the Research Committee on Theory of the ent, the entire audience became rather heated up.
International Sociological Association and the Swed One leading leftist sociologist of development of
ish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sci fered the sarcastic intervention that modernization
ences; the UCLA Center for Social Theory and His theory had actually produced world-wide poverty,
tory; and the Sociology Departments of the Univer and made the pointed suggestion that Inkeles try
sities of Montreal and McGill. Colleagues on each of selling his tired modernization line somewhere else.
these occasions offered helpful criticisms. Among At this point, shouts arose from various quarters of
them, the comments of Piotr Sztompka and Bjorn the audience and this distinguished social scientist
Wittrock were particularly helpful. Critical readings had to be physically restrained from underscoring his
were also supplied by Donald N. Levine, Robin theoretical point in a decidedly nonintellectual man
Wagner-Pacifici, Hans Joas, Bernard Barber, and ner. The article from which I am quoting, written by
Franco Crespi. I acknowledge with particular grati Wallerstein and published in a collection published
tude Ron Eyerman, whose ideas about intellectuals by him in 1979, clearly was drawn from the A.S.A.
stimulated the present work, and John Lim, whose talk referred to above, although my references to the
work on the New York intellectuals proved particu talk are drawn from memory. Tlryakian (1991) places
larly helpful. This essay is dedicated to Ivan Szelenyi. WaUerstein’s article in a similar historical perspective
166 Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Jg. 23, Heft 3, Juni 1994, S. 165-197
Fifteen years later, the lead article in the Ameri contradictory system that produced its antithesis,
can Sociological Review was entitled “A Theory of socialism and equality. For liberals, the transition
Market Transition: From Redistribution to Mar represented an equally momentous transformation
kets in State Socialism.“ The transition referred to of traditional society but created a set of historical
in this article was rather different from the one alternatives - democracy, capitalism, contracts and
Wallerstein had in mind. Written by Victor Nee, civil society - that did not have a moral or social
once inclined to Maoism and now a rational choice counterfactual like socialism ready to hand.
theorist specializing in China’s burgeoning market In the last five years, for the first time in the histo
economy, the article suggested that the only hope ry of social science, “the transition“ has come to
for organized socialism was capitalism. In fact, mean something that neither of these earlier treat
Nee portrayed socialism exactly as Marx had de ments could have foreseen. It is the transition from
picted capitalism, and provoked remarkably simi communism to capitalism, a phrase that seems ox-
lar expectations. State socialism, he wrote, was an ymoronic even to our chastened ears. The sense of
archaic, out-dated mode of production, one whose world-historical transformation remains, but the
internal contradictions were leading to capitalism. straight line of history seems to be running in re
Employing the class conflict analytic of Marx to verse.
the productive system that Marx believed would
In this recent period we have witnessed perhaps
end such conflict for all time, Nee argued that it is
the most dramatic set of spatially and temporally
state socialism, not capitalism, that “appropriates
contiguous social transformations in the history of
surplus directly from the immediate producers and
world. The more contemporary meaning of transi
creates and structures social inequality through the
tion may not entirely eclipse the earlier one, yet
processes of its reallocation“ (1989: 665). Such ex
there is no doubt that it has already diminished its
propriation of surplus - exploitation - can be over
significance and will arouse significantly more in
come only if workers are given the opportunity to
tellectual interest for a long time to come.
own and sell their own labour power. Only with
markets, Nee insisted, could workers develop the This second great transformation, to redirect Pola-
power to “withhold their product“ and protect nyi’s (1944) famous phrase, has produced an unex
their “labor power“ (p. 666). This movement from pected, and for many an unwelcome, convergence
one mode of production to another would shift in both history and social thought. It is impossible
power to the formerly oppressed class. “The tran even for already committed intellectuals to ignore
sition from redistribution to markets,“ he conclud the fact that we are witnessing the death of a major
ed, “involves a transfer of power favoring direct alternative not only in social thought but in society
producers“ (ibid.). itself.3 In the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that
either citizens or elites will try to structure their
primary allocative systems in non-market ways.4
1. A New “Transition“
In the juxtaposition between these formulations of

modernity, socialism, and capitalism there lies a 3 This impossibility is strikingly expressed in the cri de
story. They describe not only competing theoreti coeur issued by Shoji Ishitsuka, one of Japan’s lead
cal positions but deep shifts in historical sensibility. ing Lukacs scholars and “critical theorists“:
“The whole history of Social Enlightenment, which
We must understand both together, I believe, if ei was so great for its realization of the idea of equality,
ther contemporary history or contemporary theory has well as so tragic for its enforcemnt of dictator
is to be understood at all. ship, has ended ... The crisis of the human sciences
Social scientists and historians have long talked [which as resulted] can be described as a crisis of re-
about “the transition.“ An historical phrase, a so cogniton. The progress-oriented historical viewpoint
has totally disappeared because the historical move
cial struggle, a moral transformation for better or ment is now toward capitalism from socialism. The
for worse, the term referred, of course, to the crisis also finds its expression in the whole decline of
movement from feudalism to capitalism. For stage-oriented historical theory in general.“ (Ishit
Marxists, the transition initiated the unequal and suka 1994)
4 “We should henceforth conclude that the future of
socialism, if it has one, can only lie within capital
and provides an analysis of the fate of modernization ism,“ writes Steven Lukes (1990: 574) in an effort to
theory that bears a marked similarity to the one I un come to grips with the new transitions. For an intelli
dertake here. gent, often anguished, and revealing intra-left de-
Jeffrey C. Alexander: Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo 167
For their part, social scientists will be far less likely don’t believe it is prose, and I will address the chal
to think of antimarket “socialist societies“ as coun- lenging question, recently raised so trenchantly by
terfactual alternatives with which to explain their Muller (1992), of whether this emerging conversa
own. They will be less likely to explain economic tion can avoid the relatively simplistic and totaliz
stratification by implicitly comparing it with an ing form that obliterated the complexities of earli
egalitarian distribution produced by publicly rather er societies and the particularisms of our own.
than privately held property, a “plausible world“ Despite this new and more sophisticated form,
(Hawthorn 1991) that inevitably seems to suggest however, what I will later call neo-modern theory
that economic inequality is produced by the exis will remain as much myth as science (Barbour
tence of private property itself. Social scientists 1974), as much narrative as explanation (Entrikin
will, perhaps, also be less likely to explain status 1991). Even if one believes, as I do, that such a
stratification by postulating the counterfactual ten broader and more sophisticated theory of social
dency to communal esteem in a world that is uncor development is now historically compelling, it re
rupted by individualism of a bourgeois rather than mains the case that every general theory of social
socialist kind. Similarly, it will become much more change is rooted not only in cognition but in exis
difficult to speak about the emptiness of formal de tence, that it possesses a surplus of meaning in Ri-
mocracy, or to explain its limitations by pointing coeur’s (1977) deeply suggestive phrase. Moderni
merely to the existence of a dominant economic ty, after all, has always been a highly relativist term
class, for these explanations, too, require counter- (Pocock 1987, Habermas 1981, Bourricaud 1987).
factuals of a traditionally “socialist“ kind. In brief, It emerged in the fifth century when newly Chris
it will be much less easy to explain contemporary tianized Romans wished to distinguish their religi
social problems by pointing to the capitalist nature osity from two forms of barbarians, the heathens
of the societies of which they are a part. of antiquity and the unregenerate Jews. In medi
In this essay, I do not propose a return to “conver eval times, modernity was reinvented as a term im
gence“ or modernization theories of society as plying cultivation and learning, which allowed
such, as some reinvirgorated propnents of the ear contemporary intellectuals to identify backward,
ly tradition (Inkeles 1991, Lipset 1990) apparently with the classical learning of the Greek and Ro
do.5*I will propose, however, that contemporary man heathens themselves. With the Enlighten
social theory must be much more sensitive to the ment, modernity became identified with rationali
apparent reconvergence of the world’s regimes and ty, science, and forward progress, a semantically
that, as a result, we must try to incorporate some arbitrary relationship that seems to have held
broad sense of the universal and shared elements steady to this day. Who can doubt that, sooner or
of development into a critical, undogmatic, and re later, a new historical period will displace this sec
flective theory of social change. Indeed, in the ond “age of equipoise“ (Burn 1974) into which we
conclusion of this essay I will demonstrate that a have so inadvertently but fortuitously slipped.
growing range of widely diverse contemporary so New contradictions will emerge and competing
cial theorists, from literary radicals and rational sets of world-historical possibilities will arise, and
choice theorists to postcommunists, are speaking it is unlikely that they will be viewed in terms of
convergence even if (apologies to Moliere) they the emerging neo-modernization frame.
It is precisely this sense of the instability, of the im
bate on the ideological and empirical implications of minent transitoriness of the world, that introduces
these events, see the debate to which Lukes’ essay myth into social theory. Despite the fact that we
forms a part: Goldfarb (1990), Katznelson (1990), have no idea what our historical possibilities will
Heilbroner (1990) and Campeanu (1990).
5 For some contentious and revealing formulations of
be, every theory of social change must theorize not
these issues, see the debate between Nikolai Genov, only the past but the present and future as well. We
Piotr Sztompka, Franco Crespi, Hans Joas, myself, can do so only in a nonrational way, in relation not
and other theorists in the 1991 and 1992 issues of only to what we know but to what we believe,
Theory, the Newsletter of the Research Committee hope, and fear. Every historical period needs a
on Sociological Theory of the International Sociolog narrative that defines its past in terms of the pre
ical Association. Those exchanges, which reproduced sent, and suggests a future that is fundamentally
many of the old lines of modernization versus anti-
different, and typically “even better,“ than con
modernization debate, demonstrated how difficult it
is to step outside of binary thinking on the conver temporary time. For this reason, there is always an
gence issue, for reasons that the following analysis of eschatology, not merely an epistemology, in theo
codes will make clear. rizing about social change.
I proceed now to examine early modernization cial change, “modernization“ theory as such was
theory, its contemporary reconstruction, and the born with the publication of Marian Levy’s book
vigorous intellectual alternatives that arose in the on Chinese family structure (1949) and died some
period between.61 will insist throughout on the re time in the mid-60s, during one of those extraordi
lation of these theoretical developments to social narily heated rites of spring that marked student
and cultural history, for only in this way can we un uprisings, antiwar movements, and newly human
derstand social theory not only as science but also ist socialist regimes, and which preceded the long
as an ideology in the sense made famous by Geertz hot summers of the race riots and Black Con
(1973). For unless we recognize the interpenetra sciousness movement in the U.S.
tion of science and ideology in social theory, nei Modernization theory can and certainly should be
ther element can be evaluated or clarified in a ra evaluated as a scientific theory, in the postpositiv
tional way. With this stricture in mind, I delineate ist, wissenschaftliche sense.7As an explanatory ef
four distinctive theoretical-cum-ideological peri fort, the modernization model was characterized
ods in postwar social thought: modernization theo by the following ideal-typical traits.8*
ry and romantic liberalism; antimodernization the
1. Societies were conceived as coherently orga
ory and heroic radicalism; postmodern theory and
nized systems whose subsystems were closely inter
comic detachment; and the emerging phase of
dependent.
neo-modernization or reconvergence theory,
which seems to combine the narrative forms of 2. Historical development was parsed into two ty
each of its predecessors on the post-war scene. pes of social systems, the traditional and the mod
ern, statuses which were held to determine the
While I will be engaging in genealogy, locating the
character of their societal subsystems in determi
historical origins of each phase of post-war theory
nate ways.
in an archaeology way, it is vital to keep in mind
that each one of the theoretical residues of the 3. The modern was defined with reference to the
phases which I examine remains vitally alive today. social organization and culture of specifically West
My archeology, on other words, is not only an in ern societies, which were typified as individualis
vestigation of the past but of the present. Because tic, democratic, capitalist, scientific, secular, and
the present is history, this genealogy will help us to stable, and as dividing work from home in gender-
understand the theoretical sedimentation within specifc ways.
which we live intellectually today. 4. As an historical process, modernization was
held to involve nonrevolutionary, incremental
change.
2. Modernization: Code, Narrative,
and Explanation
Drawing from a centuries-long tradition of evolu 7 By scientific, I do not evoke the principles of empiri
tionary and Enlightenment inspired theories of so- cism. I do mean to refer, however, to the explanatory
ambition and propositions of a theory, which must be
evaluated in their own terms. These can be interpre
6 Paul Colomy and I (1992) have introduced the term tive and cultural, eschew narrative or statistical cau
“reconstruction“ to indicate a path of scientific cu sality and, indeed, the natural scientific form. By
mulation that is more radical vis-a-vis the originating extra-scientific, I mean to refer to a theory’s mythical
tradition than the kinds of efforts at specification, or ideological function.
elaboration, or revision that more typically mark the 8 I draw here from a broad range of writings that ap
efforts of social scientists who wish to keep their the peared in the 1950s and early 1960s by such figures as
oretical tradition alive in response to intellectual Daniel Lemer, Marion Levy, Alex Inkeles, Talcott
challenge and the loss of scientific prestige. Recon Parsons, David Apter, Robert Bellah, S. N. Eisens-
struction suggests that fundamental elements of the tadt, Walt Rostow, and Clark Kerr. None of these au
founder’s “classical“ work are changed, often by in thors accepted each of these propositions as such,
corporating elements from its challengers, even and some of them, as we will see, “sophisticated“
while the tradition as such is defended, e.g., Haber them in significant ways. Nonetheless, these proposi
mas’s effort to “reconstruct historical materialism“ in tions can be accepted as forming the common de
the mid-1970s. Reconstruction should also be distin nominator upon which the great part of the tradi
guished from “theory creation,“ in which a funda tion’s explanatory structure was based. For an excel
mentally different theoretical tradition is created, lent overview of this traditon that, while more de
e.g., Habermas’ later effort to create the theory of tailed, agrees in fundamental respects with the ap
communicative action. proach taken here, see Sztompka 1993: 129-136.
5. The historical evolution to modernity - mod complex we often refer to as “modernization“ ... Clear
ernization - was viewed as likely to succeed, thus ly, definite victory for either side is not the only possible
assuring that traditional societies would be provid choice. We have another alternative, namely, the even
ed with the resources for what Parsons (1966) cal tual integration of both sides - and of uncommitted
units as well - in a wider system of order.101*
led a general process of adaptive “upgrading,“ in
cluding economic take-off to industrialization, de Despite these important insights, however, the his
mocratization via law, and secularization and sci torical judgment of subsequent social thought has
ence via education. not erred in its evaluation of modernization theory
There were important aspects of truth in these as a failed explanatory scheme. Neither nonwes
models, which were articulated by thinkers of con tern nor precontemporary societies can be concep
siderable historical and sociological insight. One tualized as internally homogeneous (cf., Mann
truth, for example, lay in the insight that there are 1986). Their subsystems are more loosely coupled
(e.g., Meyers/Rowan 1977, Alexander/Colomy
functional not merely idealistic exigencies that
1990) and their cultural codes more independent
push social systems toward democracy, markets,
and the universalization of culture, and that shifts (e.g., Hall 1985). Nor is there the kind of dicho
tomized historical development that can justify a
toward “modernity“ in any subsystem create con
single conception of traditional or modern, as Ei-
siderable pressures on the others to respond in a
senstadt’s (e.g., 1964; cf., Alexander 1992) exten
complementary way.9 This understanding made it
sive investigations of “Axial Age“ civilizations ma
possible for the more sophisticated among them to
kes clear. Even the concept, “western society,“
make prescient predictions about the eventual in
built upon spatial and historical contiguity, fails
stability of state socialist societies, thus avoiding
sufficiently to recognize historical specificity and
the rational-is-the-real embarrassments encoun
national variation. Social systems, moreover, are
tered by theorists of a more leftist kind. Thus, Par
not as internally homogeneous as were supposed,
sons (1971: 127) insisted long before Perestroika
nor are there necessarily grounds for optimism
“that the processes of democratic revolution have
that modernization will succeed. In the first place,
not reached an equilibrium in the Soviet Union
universalizing change is neither imminent nor de
and that further developments may well run
velopmental in an idealist sense; it is often abrupt,
broadly in the direction of Western types of demo
involving contingent positions of power, and can
cratic government, with responsibility to an elec
have murderous results.11 In the second place,
torate rather than to a self-appointed party.“ It
even if one were to accept a linear conceptual
should perhaps also be emphasized that, whatever
scheme, one would have to acknowledge Nietzs
their faults, modernization theorists were not pro
che’s observation that historical regression is just as
vincials. Despite their ideological intent, the most
possible as progress, indeed, perhaps even more
important of them rarely confused functional inter
likely. Finally, modernization, even if it does tri
dependence with historical inevitability. Parsons’
umph, does not necessarily increase social con
theorizing, for example (1962: 466, 474), stressed
tentment. It may be that the more highly devel
that systemic exigencies actually opened up the
oped a society, the more it produces, encourages,
possibility of historical choice.
Underneath the ideological conflicts [between capital
ism and communism] that have been so prominent, 10 I am grateful to Muller (1992: 118) for recalling this
there has been emerging an important element of very passage. Muller notes the “acute sense of reality“
broad consensus at the level of values, centering in the (ibid., I ll) displayed in modernization theory’s
“amazing hypotheses“ (ibid., p. 112) about the even
tual demise of state socialism. He insists, quite cor
9 Probably the most sophisticated formulation of this rectly in my view, that “it was not the [neo-Marxist]
truth is Smelser’s elaboration (e.g., 1968), during the critique of capitalism in the 1970s which correctly
final days of modernization theory, of how modern read the secular trends of the late twentieth century
ization produced leads and lags between subsystems, - it was Parsons’ theory“ (ibid.).
a process which, borrowing from Trotsky, he called 11 “Seen historically, ‘modernization’ has always been a
uneven and combined development. Like virtually process propelled by inter-cultural exchange, mili
every other important younger theorist of the peri tary conflicts and economic competition among
od, Smelser eventually gave up on the modernization states and power blocks - as, likewise, Western post
model, in his case for a “process“ model (Smelser war modernization took place within a newly created
1991) that delineated no particular epochal charac world order“ (Muller 1992: 138). See also the cri
teristics and which allowed subsystems to interact in tiques of classical differentiation theory in Alexander
a highly open-ended way. (1988) and Alexander/Colomy (1990).
and relies upon strident and often utopian expres “time“, they must identify a time that preceded the
sions of alienation and criticism (Dürkheim 1937). present, offer a morally compelling account of why
When we look back on a “scientifically invalidat it was superseded, and tell their audiences whether
ed“ theory that dominated the thinking of an en or not such a transformation will be repeated vis-a-
tire intellectual stratum for two decades, those of vis the world they live in. This is, of course, merely
us who are still committed to the project of a ratio to say that intellectuals produce historical narra
nal and generalizing social science will be inclined tives about their own time.13*
to ask ourselves, why was it believed? While we The ideological dimension of modernization theo
would ignore at our peril the partial truths of mod ry is further illuminated by thinking of this narra
ernization theory, we would not be wrong to con tive function in a structuralist, or semiotic way
clude that there were extra-scientific reasons in (Barthes 1977). Because the existential unit of ref
volved. Social theory (Alexander/Colomy 1992) erence is one’s own time, the empirical unit of ref
must be considered not only as a research program erence must be totalized as one’s own society. It
but as a generalized discourse, one very important must, in other words, be characterized as a whole
part of which is ideology. It is as a meaning struc regardless of the actual nature of its divisions and
ture, as a form of existential truth, that social sci inconsistencies. Not only one’s own time, then, but
entific theory functions effectively in an extras- one’s own society must be characterized by a single
cientific way.12 linguistic term, and the world that preceded the
To understand modernization theory and its fate, present must be characterized by another single
then, we must examine it not only as a scientific broad term as well. In light of these consider
theory but as an ideology - not in the mechanistic ations, the important ideological, or meaning
Marxist or more broadly Enlightenment sense making function that modernization theory served
(e.g., Boudon 1986) of “false consciousness“ but seems fairly clear. For Western but especially
in the Geertzian (1973) one. Modernization theory American and American-educated intellectuals,
was a symbolic system that functioned not only to modernization theory provided a telos for postwar
explain the world in a rational way, but to interpret society by making it “historical.“ It did so by pro
the world in a manner that provided “meaning and viding postwar society with a temporal and spatial
motivation“ (Bellah 1970b). It functioned as a identity, an identity that could be formed only in a
metalanguage that instructed people how to live. relation of difference with another, immediately
preceding time and place. As Pocock has recently
Intellectuals must interpret the world, not simply
emphasized, “modernity“ must be understood as
change or even explain it. To do so in a meaning
the “consciousness rather than the condition of be
ful, reassuring, or inspiring manner fashion means
ing ‘modern’.“ Taking a linguistic model of con
that intellectuals must make distinctions. They
sciousness, he suggests that such consciousness
must do so especially in regard to phases of history.
must be defined as much by difference as identifi
If intellectuals are to define the “meaning“ of their
cation. The modern is a “signifier“ that functions
as an “excluder“ at the same time.
12 This existential or mythical dimension of social scien
tific theory is generally ignored in interpretations of 13 “We can comprehend the appeal of historical dis
social scientific thought, except for those occasions course by recognizing the extent to which it makes
when it is glossed as political ideology (e.g., Gould- the real desirable, makes the real into an object of
ner 1970). Simmel acknowledged a genre of specula desire, and does so by its imposition, upon events
tive work in social science, which he called “philo that are represented as real, of the formal coherency
sophical sociology,“ but he carefully differentiated it that stories possess ... The reality that is represented
from the empirical disciplines or parts thereof. For in the historical narrative, in ‘speaking itself,’ speaks
example, he wrote in his Philosophy of Money that a to us .. and displays to us a formal coherency that we
philosophical sociology was necessary because there ourselves lack. The historical narrative, as against
exist questions “that we have so far been unable ei the chronicle, reveals to us a world that is putatively
ther to answer or to discuss“ (quoted in Levine 1991: ‘finished,’ done with, over, and yet not dissolved, not
99, italics added). As I see it, however, questions that falling apart. In this world, reality wears the mask of
are essentially unanswerable lie at the heart of all so a meaning, the completeness and fullness of which
cial scientific theories of change. This means that one we can only imagine, never experience. Insofar as
cannot neatly separate the empirical from the non- historical stories can be completed, can be given nar
empirical. In terms I employ below, even theorists in rative closure, can be shown to have had a plot all
the social sciences are intellectuals, even if most in along, they give to reality the odor of the ideal.“
tellectuals are not social scientific theorists. (White 1980: 20, original italics)
We call something (perhaps ourselves) modern in order theory, despite the importance of a small number
to distance that of which we speak from some anteced of influential Europeans like Raymond Aron (e.g.
ent state of affairs. The antecedent is most unlikely to be Aron 1962), we are speaking primarily about
of neutral effect in defining either what is to be called American and American-educated intellectuals.15
“modern“ or the “modernity“ attributed to it (Pocock Following some recent work by Eyerman (1992;
1987: 48).
cf., Jamison/Eyerman 1994) on the formation of
If I may give to this approach a late-Durkheimian American intellectuals in the 1950s, I would begin
turn (Alexander 1989), I would like to suggest that by emphasizing the distinctive social characteris
we think of modernity as constructed upon a bina tics of the postwar period in the United States, par
ry code. This code serves the mythological func ticularly the sharpness of the transition to the post
tion of dividing the known world into the sacred war world. This transition was marked by massive
and profane, thereby providing a clear and com suburbanization and the decline of culturally-
pelling picture of how contemporaries must act to bounded urban communities, a dramatic reduction
manoeuvre the space in between.14 In this sense, in the ethnicity of American life, an extraordinary
the discourse of modernity bears a striking resem lessening of labor-capital conflict, and by unprece
blance to metaphysical and religious salvation dis dented long term prosperity.
course of diverse kinds (Weber 1964, Walzer 1965). These new social circumstances, coming as they
It also resembles the more secular dichotomizing did at the end of two decades of massive national
discourses that citizens employ to identify them and international upheaval, induced in postwar
selves with, and to distance themselves from, the American intellectuals a sense of a fundamental
diverse individuals, styles, groups, and structures historical “break.“16 On the left, intellectuals
in contemporary societies (Wagner-Pacifici 1986,
Bourdieu 1984).
It has been argued, in fact (Alexander 1992, Alex- 15 The retrospective account by Lerner, one of the ar
ander/Smith 1993), that a “discourse of civil soci chitects of modernization theory, indicates the pivot
ety“ provides a structured semiotic field for the al nature of the American reference:
conflicts of contemporary societies, positing ideal “[After] World War II, which witnessed the constric
ized qualities like rationality, individuality, trust, tion of European empires and the diffusion of Amer
and truth as essential qualities for inclusion in the ican presence ... one spoke, often resentfully, of the
Americanization of Europe. But when one spoke of
modern, civil sphere, while identifying qualities the rest of the world, the term was “Westernization“.
such as irrationality, conformity, suspicion, and de The postwar years soon made clear, however, that
ceit as traditional traits that demand exclusion and even this larger term was too parochial... A global
punishment. There is a striking overlap between referent [was needed.] In response to this need, the
these ideological constructions and the explanato new term ‘modernization’ evolved.“ (Lerner 1968:
ry categories of modernization theory, for example 386)
Parsons’ pattern variables. In this sense, modern An interesting topic of investigation would be the
ization theory may be seen as a generalizing and contrast between European theorists of moderniza
abstracting effort to transform an historically spe tion and Americans ones. The most distinguished
European and the most original, Raymond Aron,
cific categorical scheme into a scientific theory of had a decidedly less optimistic view of convergence
development applicable to any culture around the than his American counterparts, as he demonstrated,
entire world. e.g., in his Progress and Disillusion (1968), which
Because every ideology is carried by an intellectual forms an extremely interesting counterpart to his
cadre (Konrad/Szelenyi 1974, Eisenstadt 1986), it convergence argument in Eighteen Lectures on In
dustrial Society. While there seems little doubt that
is important to ask why the intellectual cadre in a Aron’s version of convergence theory also represent
particular time and place articulated and promot ed a response to the cataclysm of World War II, it was
ed a particular theory. In regard to modernization a more fatalistic and resolute reaction than an opti
mistic and pragmatic one. See the account in his
Memoires (Aron 1990).
14 Of course, as Caillois (1959) pointed out, and as 16 “The Forties was a decade when the speed with
Durkheim’s original work obscured, there are actual which one’s own events occurred seemed as rapid as
ly three terms that so classifiy the world, for there is the history of the battlefields, and for the mass of
also the “mundane.“ Myth disdains the very exis people in America a forced march into a new jungle
tence of the nundane, moving between the highly of emotion was the result. The surprises, the failures,
charged poles of negative repulsion and positive at and the dangers of that life must have terrified some
traction. nerve Qf awareness in the power and the mass, for, as
like C. Wright Mills and David Riesman issued In such dramaturgical terms we can characterize
jeremiads against what they feared was the massi- the historical period that preceded the era of mod
fication of society. In the liberal center, theorists ernization theory as one in which intellectuals “in
like Parsons suggested how the same transition had flated“ the importance of actors and events by em-
created a more egalitarian, more inclusive, and plotting them in a heroic narrative. The 1930’s and
significantly more differentiated society.17 On the the war years that followed defined a period of in
right, there were cries of alarm about the disap tense social conflict that generated millennial -
pearance of the individual in an authoritarian and world-historical - hopes for utopian social trans
bureaucratic welfare state (Buckley 1951, Ayn formation, either through communist and fascist
Rand 1957). On every side of the political spec revolutions or the construction of an unprecedent
trum, in other words, American intellectuals were ed kind of “welfare state.“ Post-war American in
motivated by a sense of dramatic and bifurcating tellectuals, by contrast, experienced the social
social change. This was the social basis for con world in more “deflationary“ terms. With the fail
structing the traditional/modern binary code, an ure of revolutionary proletarian movements in Eu
experience of bifurcation that demanded an inter rope and the head-long rush to normalization and
pretation of present anxieties, and future possibili
ties, in relation to the imagined past.
which purports to refute its bourgeois form yet ma
To fully understand the interrelation between his kes heavy use of its substantive content. Jameson
tory and theory that produced the new intellectu (1980: 130) calls Frye’s method a “positive herme
als, however, we must think about narrativity in neutic“ because “his identification of mythic patterns
addition to symbolic structure. In order to do so, in modern texts aims at reinforcing our sense of the
we will draw upon the dramaturgical terms of affinity between the cultural present of capitalism
and the distant mythical past of tribal societies, and
genre theory, which stretches from Aristotle’s poet at awakening a sense of the continuity between our
ics to the path-setting literary criticism of Northrop psychic life and that of primitive peoples.“ He offers
Frye (1957), which inspired the more recent “nega his “negative hermeneutic“ as an alternative, assert
tive hermeneutics“ of historically-oriented literary ing that it uses “the narrative raw material shared by
critics like White (1987), Jameson (1980), Brooke myth and ‘historical’ literatures to sharpen our sense
(1984), and Fussell (1975).18* of historical difference, and to stimulate an increas
ingly vivid apprehension of what happens when plot
falls into history ... and enters the force fields of the
modern societies“ (ibid.)
if stricken ... the retreat to a more conservative exis Despite the fact that Jameson is wedded to a reflec
tence was disorderly, the fear of communism spread tion theory of ideology, he produces, in fact, an ex
like an irrational hail of boils. To anyone who could cellent rationale for the use of genre analysis in un
see, the excessive hysteria of the Red wave was no derstanding historical conflicts. He argues that an in
preparation to face an enemy, but rather a terror of fluential social “text“ must be understood as “a so
the national self.“ (Mailer 1987 [I960]: 14). cially symbolic act, as the ideological - but formal
17 It terms of the break induced in American intellectu and immanent - response to a historical dilemma“
als by the postwar period, it is revealing to compare (ibid., p. 139). Because of the strains in the social en
this later change theory of Parsons with his earlier vironment that call texts forth, “it would seem to fol
one. In the essays on social change he composed in low that, properly used, genre theory must always in
the decade after 1937, Parsons consistently took Ger one way or another project a model of the coexis
many as his model, emphasizing the destablilizing, tence or tension between several generic modes or
polarizing, and antidemocratic implications of social strands.“ With this “methodological axiom,“ Jame
differentiation and rationalization. When he referred son suggests, “the typologizing abuses of traditional
to modernization in this period, and he rarely did, he genre theory criticism are definitely laid to rest“
employed the term to refer to a pathological, over (ibid., p. 141).
rationalizing process, one that produced the symp For the relevance of generic theory to the analysis of
tomatic reaction of “traditionalism.“ After 1947, Par social rather literary texts, see the historical writings
sons took the United States as the type case for*his of Slotkin (1973), the sociological studies of Wagner-
studies of social change, relegating Nazi Germany to Pacifici (1986) and Gibson (1991), and more recently
the status of deviant case. Modernization and tradi the work of Margaret R. Somers (e.g., 1992).
tionalism were now viewed as structural processes For the particularities of my own approach to social
rather than as ideologies, symptoms, or social ac genre and its relation to cultural codes, I am indebt
tions. ed to conversations with Philip Smith (1991, 1993)
18 It is ironic that one of the best recent explications of, and Steven Sherwood (1994), whose own writings
and justifications for, Frye’s version of generic history are important theoretical statements in their own
can be found in the Marxist criticism of Jameson, right.
demobilization in the United States, the heroic lectuals charted their times. Romanticism was.20*
“grand narratives“ of collective emancipation Relatively deflated in comparison with heroism,
seemed less compelling.19 No longer was the pre romanticism tells a story that is more positive in its
sent perceived primarily as a way station to an al evaluation of the world as it exists today. In the
ternative social order, but, rather, as more or less postwar period it allowed intellectuals and their
the only possible system there ever could be. audiences to believe that progress would be more
Such a deflationary acceptance of “this world“ was or less continuously achieved, that improvement
not necessarily distopian, fatalistic, or conserva was likely. This state of grace referred, however,
tive. In Europe and America, for example, there more to individuals than to groups, and to incre
emerged a principled anticommunism that wove mental rather than revolutionary change. In the
together the bare threads of a collective narrative new world that emerged from the ashes of war, it
and committed their societies to social democracy. had finally become possible to cultivate one’s own
Yet, even for these reformist groups, the deflation garden. This cultivation would be an enlightened,
of prewar social narratives had strong effects, ef modernist work, regulated by the cultural patterns
fects that were very widely shared. Intellectuals as of achievement and neutrality (Parsons and Shils
a group became more “hard-headed“ and “realis 1951), culminating in the “active“ (Etzioni 1968)
tic.“ Realism diverges radically from the heroic and “achieving“ (McClelland 1953) society.
narrative, inspiring a sense of limitation and re Romanticism, in other words, allowed America’s
straint rather than idealism and sacrifice. Black postwar social science intellectuals, even in a peri
and white thinking, so important for social mobili od of relative narrative deflation, to continue to
zation, is replaced by “ambiguity“ and “complexi speak the language of progress and universaliza
ty,“ terms favored by New Critics like Empson tion. In the United States, what differentiates ro
(1927) and particularly Trilling (1950), and by mantic from heroic narratives is the emphasis on
“skepticism,“ a position exemplified in Niebuhr’s the self and private life. In America’s social narra
writings (e.g., Niebuhr 1952). The conviction that tives, heroes are epochal; they lead entire peoples
one has been “born again“ - this time to the social to salvation, as collective representations like the
sacred - which inspires utopian enthusiasm, is suc American revolution and the civil rights movement
ceeded by the “thrice born“ chastened soul de indicate. Romantic evolution, by contrast, is not
scribed by Bell (1962c) and by an acute sense that collective; it is about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn
the social God has failed (Crossman 1950). In (Fiedler 1955), about the yeoman farmer (Smith
deed, this new realism convinced many that narra 1950), and Horatio Alger. American intellectuals,
tive itself - history - had been eclipsed, which pro then, articulated modernization as a process that
duced the representations of this newly “modern“ freed the self and made society’s subsystems re
society as the “end of ideology“ (Bell 1962a) and sponsive to its needs. In this sense modernization
the portrayal of the postwar world as “industrial“ theory was behavioral and pragmatic; it focussed
(Aron 1962, Lipset/Bendix 1960) rather than as on real individuals rather than on a collective his
capitalistic. torical subject like nation, ethnic group, or class.
Yet, while realism was a significant mood in the Existentialism was basic to the romantic American
postwar period, it was not the dominant narrative ideology of “modernism.“ American intellectuals,
frame through which postwar social science intel- indeed, developed an idiosyncratic, optimistic
reading of Sartre. In the milieu saturated with exis
tentialism, “authenticity“ became a central crite
19 By using the postmodern term “grand narrative“ rion for evaluating individual behavior, an empha
(Lyotard 1985), I am committing anachronism, but I
am doing so in order to demonstrate the lack of his
sis that was central to Lionell Trilling’s (1955) mod
torical perspective implied by the postmodernist slo ernist literary criticism but also permeated social
gan, “the end of the grand narrative.“ Grand narra theory that ostensibly did not advocate moderniza
tives, in fact, are subjected to periodic historical de tion, for example, Erving Goffman’s (1956) micro
flation and inflation, and there are always other, less
inflated generic constructions “waiting“ to take their
place. I will point out below, indeed, that there are 20 Romanticism is used here in the technical, genre
important similarities between the postwar period of sense suggested by Frye (1957), rather than in the
narrative deflation and the 1980s, which produced a broad historical sense that would refer to post-
broadly similar intuming that postmodernism char classical music, art, and literature, which in the terms
acterized to such great effect as an historically un employed here was more “heroic“ in its narrative im
precedented social fact. plications.
sociology, with its equation of freedom with role than it does about modernism itself. In culture, in
distance and its conception of back-versus-front theory, and in art, modernism represented a spare
stage,21 and David Reisman’s (1950) eulogy for the ness that devalued artifice not only as decoration
inner-directed man. but as pretension, and undercut utopianism as a
These individualistic romantic narratives stressed collective delusion that was homologous with neu
the challenge of being modern, and they were rosis of an individual kind (Fromm 1955, 1956). It
complemented by an emphasis on irony, the narra was precisely such admirable qualities that Bell
tive Frye defines as deflationary vis-a-vis romance (1976) designated as early or “classical modernity“
but not downright negative in its effects. In the in his attack on the sixties in The Cultural Con
1950s and early 1960s, the modernist aesthetic in tradictions of Capitalism.
England and America stressed irony, introspec This picture was not, of course, an entirely homo
tion, ambiguity. The dominant literary theory, so- geneous one. On the right, engagement in the
called New Criticism, while tracing its origins back Cold War provided for some intellectuals a new
to Empson’s The Seven Types o f Ambiguity (1927), field for collective heroism, despite the fact that
came into its own only after the heroic and much America’s most influential modernist thinkers were
more historicist criticism of the 1930s. The key not as a rule Cold Warriors of the most righteous
contemporary figure in American letters was Lio kind. On the Left, both within and outside the
nel Tilling, who defined the psychological and aes U.S., there were important islands of social criti
thetic goal of modernity as the expansion of com cism that made self-conscious departures from Ro
plexity and tolerance for ambiguity. Psychoanaly manticism of both a Social Democratic and indi
sis was a major critical approach, interpreted as an vidualist ironic sort.22*Intellectuals influenced by
exercise in introspection and moral control (Rieff the Frankfurt school, like Mills and Riesman, and
1959). In graphic art, “modern“ was equated with other critics, like Arendt, refused to legitimate the
abstraction, the revolt against decoration, and humanism of this individualist turn, criticizing
with minimalism, all of which were interpreted as what they called the new mass society as forcing in
drawing attention away from the surface and pro dividuals into an amoral, egotistical mode. They
viding pathways into the inner self. inverted modernization theory’s binary code,
It is evidently difficult, at this remove, for contem viewing American rationality as instrumental rath
porary postmodern and post-postmodern intellec er than moral and expressive, big science as tech
tuals to recapture the rich and, indeed, often enno nocratic rather than inventive. They saw conformi
bling aspects of this intellectual and aesthetic mod ty rather than independence; power elites rather
ernism, almost as difficult as it is for contemporar than democracy; and deception and disappoint
ies to see the beauty and passion of modernist ar ment rather than authenticity, responsibility, and
chitecture that Pevsner (1949) so effectively cap romance.
tured in his epoch-defining Pioneers o f Modern In the 50s and early 60s, these social critics did not
Design. The accounts of intellectual-cum-aesthetic become highly influential. To do so they would
modernism proffered by contemporary postmo have had to pose a compelling alternative, a new
dernists - from Baumann (1989), Seidman (1991,
1992, and Lasch (1985) to Harvey (1989) and Ja
meson (1988) - is a fundamental misreading. Their 22 The present account does not, in other words, as
construction of it as dehumanizing abstraction, sume complete intellectual consensus during the
mechanism, fragmentation, linearity, and domina phases described. Counter trends existed, and they
should be noted. There is also the very real possibili
tion, I will suggest below, says much more about ty (see n. 28, below) that intellectuals and their audi
the ideological exigencies that they and other con ences had access to more than one code/narrative at
temporary intellectuals are experiencing today any given point in historical time, an access that
Wagner-Padfici (personal communication) calls dis
21 When I arrived at the University of California, cursive hybridity. My account does suggest, however,
Berkeley, for graduate school in Sociology in 1969, that each of these phases was marked, indeed was in
some of the Department’s Chicago school sociolo part constructed by, the hegemony of one intellectual
gists, influenced by Goffman and Sartre, announced framework over others. Narratives are constructed
an informal faculty-student seminar on “authentici upon binary codes, and it is the polarity of binary op
ty.“ This represented an existentialism-inspired re positions that allows historicizing intellectuals to
sponse to the alienation emphasis of the sixties. As make sense of their time. “Binarism“ is less an eso
such, it was historically out of phase. Nobody attend teric theoretical construct than an existential fact of
ed the seminar. life.
heroic narrative to describe how the sick society important to recognize that during this second
could be transformed and a healthy one put in its postwar period serious “reality problems“ began
place.23This was impossible to do in the deflation to intrude on modernization theory in a serious
ary times. Fromm’s Art o f Loving (1956) followed way. Despite the existence of capitalist markets,
his denunciation of The Sane Society (1956); in the poverty persisted at home (Harrington 1962) and
fifties, social solutions often were contained in in perhaps was even increasing in the third world.
dividual acts of private love. No social program is Revolutions and wars continually erupted outside
sued from Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality of Europe and North America (Johnson 1983), and
(1950). Not only did C. Wright Mills fail to identify sometimes even seemed to be produced by mod
any viable social alternatives in his stream of criti ernization itself. Dictatorship, not democracy was
cal studies, but he went out of his way to denounce spreading throughout the rest of the world (Moore
the leaders.of the social movements of the thirties 1966); postcolonial nations seem to require an au
and forties as “the new men of power“ (Mills thoritarian state (Huntington 1968) and a com
1948). After nearly twenty years of violence- mand economy to be modern, not only in the
producing utopian hopes, collective heroics had economy and state but in other spheres as well.
lost their sheen. The right-wing populism of Mc New religious movements (Bellah/Glock 1976)
Carthy reinforced the withdrawal from public life. emerged in Western countries and in the develop
Eventually, however, Americans and Western Eu ing world, with sacralization and ideology gaining
ropeans did catch their breath, with results that ground over secularization, science, and technoc
must be related, once again, to history and social racy. These developments strained the central as
theory alike. sumptions of modernization theory, although they
did not necessarily refute it.24
3. Antimodernization Theory:
24 A publication that in retrospect takes on the appear
The Heroic Revival ance of a representative, and representational, turn
ing point between these historical phases, and be
Sometime in the later 1960s, between the assassi tween modernization theory and what succeeded it,
nation of President Kennedy and the San Francis is David Apter’s edited book, Ideology and Discon
co “love“ summer of 1967, modernization theory tent (1964). Among the contributors were leading
died. It died because the emerging younger gener modernization social scientists, who grappled with
ation of intellectuals could not believe it was true. the increasingly visible anomalies of this theory, par
ticularly the continuing role of utopian and revolu
Even if we regard social theory as semiotic system tionary ideology in the third world, which inspired
rather than pragmatically inducted generalization, revolutions, and, more generally, with the failure of
it is a sign system whose signifieds are empirical re “progressive“ modernizing development. Geertz’s
ality in a rather strictly disciplined sense. So it is “Ideology as a Cultural System,“ so central to devel
opments in post-modernization theories, appeared
first in this volume. Apter himself, incidentally, dem
23 This points to one quibble I have with Jameson and onstrated a personal theoretical evolution paralleling
Eyerman’s Seeds o f the Sixties (1994), their brilliant the broader shifts documented here, moving from an
account of these critical intellectuals in the 1950’s. enthusiastic embrace, and explication, of Third
Jameson and Eyerman argue that they failed to exert World modernization, which concentrated on univer
influence, not primarely because of the conservatism sal categories of culture and social structure (see,
of the dominant society. It seems important to add, e.g., Apter 1963), to a post-modern skepticism about
however, that their own ideology was partly responsi “liberating“ change and an emphasis on cultural par
ble, for it was insufficiently historical in the future- ticularity. This latter position is indicated by the self
oriented, narrative sense. A more important dis consciously antimodernist and antirevolutionary
agreement would be that Jameson and Eyerman themes in the striking deconstruction of Maoism that
seem to accept “mass society“ as an actual empirical Apter (1987) published in the late 1980s. The intel
description of both social structural and cultural lectual careers of Robert Bellah and Michael Walzer
modernization in the fifties. In so doing, they may be (cf., my discussion of Smelser’s shifting concerns in
mistaking an intellectual account for a social reality. n. 9, above) reveal similar though not identical con
These vestiges of a realist epistemology - in what is tours.
otherwise an acutely cultural and constructivist ap These examples and others (see n. 21, above) raise
proach - makes impossible to appreciate the compel the intriguing question that Mills described as the re
ling humanism that informed so much of the work of lationship between history and biography. How did
the very fifties intellectuals whom these critics often individual intellectuals deal with the historical suc
attacked. cession of code/narrative frames, which pushed them
Factual problems, however, are not enough to cre placed, discussions of stratification and mobility.
ate scientific revolutions. Broad theories can de Conflict theories (Coser 1956, Dahrendorf 1959,
fend themselves by defining and protecting a set of Rex 1961) replaced functional ones; state centered
core propositions, jettisoning entire segments of political theories (Bendix et al. 1968, Collins 1976,
their perspective as only peripherally important. Skocpol 1979, Evans et al., 1985) replaced value
Indeed, if one looks closely at modernization theo centered and multidimensional approaches; and
ry during the middle and late 1960s, and even dur conceptions of binding social structures were chal
ing the early 1970’s, one can see an increasing so lenged by microsociologies that emphasized the
phistication as it geared up to meet its critics and to liquid, unformed, and negotiated character of ev
address the reality problems of the day. Dualistic eryday life.
simplifications about tradition and modernity were
What pushed modernization theory over the edge,
elaborated - not replaced by - notions that por
however, were not these scientific alternatives in
trayed a continuum of development, as in the later
and of themselves. Indeed, as I have indicated, the
neo-evolutionary theories of Parsons (1964, 1966,
revisors of the earlier theory had themselves begun
1971), Bellah (1964), and Eisenstadt (1964). Con
to offer coherent, equally explanatory theories for
vergence was reconceptualized to allow parallel
many of the same phenomena. The decisive fact in
but independent pathways to the modern (e.g.,
modernization theory’s defeat, rather, was the de
Shils [1972] on India, Eisenstadt [1963] on em
struction of its ideological, discursive, and mytho
pires, Bendix [1965] on citizenship). Notions like
logical core. The challenge that finally could not be
diffusion and functional substitutes were proposed
met was existential. It emerged from new social
to deal with the modernization of non Western civi
movements that were increasingly viewed in terms
lizations in a less ethnocentric manner (Bellah
of collective emancipation - peasant revolutions
1957; Cole 1979). The postulate of tight subsystem
on a world-wide scale, black and Chicano national
links was replaced by the notion of leads and lags
movements, indigenous people’s rebellions, youth
(Smelser 1968), the insistance on interchange be
culture, hippies, rock music, and women’s libera
came modified by notions of paradoxes (Schluch-
tion. Because these movements (e.g., Weiner
ter 1979), contradictions (Eisenstadt 1963), and
1984), profoundly altered the Zeitgeist - the expe
strains (Smelser 1963). Against the metalanguage
rienced tempo of the times - they captured the
of evolution, notions about developmentalism
ideological imaginations of the rising cadre of in
(Schluchter/Roth 1979) and globalism (Nettle and
tellectuals.
Robertson 1968) were suggested. Secularly gave
way to ideas about civil religion (Bellah 1970b) and In order to represent this shifting empirical and ex
by references to “the tradition of the modern“ istential environment, intellectuals developed a
(Gusfield 1976). new explanatory theory. Equally significant, they
Against these internal revisions, antagonistic theo inverted the binary code of modernization and
ries of antimodernization were proposed on the “narrated the social“ (Sherwood 1994) in a new
grounds that they were more valid explanations of way. In terms of code, “modernity“ and “modern
the reality problems that emerged. Moore (1966) ization“ moved from the sacred to the profane side
replaced modernization and evolution with revolu of historical time, with modernity assuming many
tion and counterrevolution. Thompson (1963) re of the crucial characteristics that had earlier been
placed abstractions about evolving patterns of in associated with traditionalism and backwardness.
dustrial relations with class history and conscious Rather than democracy and individualization, the
ness from the bottom up. Discourse about exploi contemporary modern period was represented as
tation and inequality (e.g., Goldthlprpe 1969, bureaucratic and repressive. Rather than a free
Mann 1973) contended with, and eventually dis market or contractual society, modern America be
came “capitalist,“ no longer rational, interdepen
dent, modern, and liberating but backward,
into interstitial positions vis-a-vis the “new world of
our time“? Some remained committed to their earli greedy, anarchic, and impoverishing.
er frameworks and became, as a result, either perma This inversion of the sign and symbols associated
nently or temporarily “obsolete.“ Others changed with modernity polluted the movements associat
their frameworks and became contemporary, not
necessarily for opportunistic reasons but because of ed with its name. The death of liberalism (Lowi
personal encounters with profoundly jarring histori 1969) was announced, and its reformist origins in
cal experiences, which sometimes gave them a keen the early twentieth century dismissed as a camou
appreciation for “the new.“ flage for extending corporate control (Weinstein
1968, Kolko 1967). Tolerance was associated with The historical vignette with which I opened this es
fuzzy-mindedness, immorality, and repression say provides an illustration of this shift in sensibili
(Wolfe et al. 1965). The asceticism of Western reli ty. In his confrontation with Inkeies, Wallerstein
gion was criticized for its repressive modernity and portentously announced, “the time has come to
Eastern and mystical religious were sacralized in put away childish things, and look reality in the
stead (Brown 1966, cf., Brown 1959). Modernity face“ (1979:133). He was not adopting here a real
was equated with the mechanism of the machine ist frame but rather donning a heroic guise. For it
(Roszak 1969). For the third world, democracy was emancipation and revolution that marked the
was defined as a luxury, strong states a necessity. narrative rhetoric of the day, not, as Weber might
Markets were not luxuries but enemies, for capi have said, the hard dreary task of facing up to
talism came to be represented as guaranteeing workaday demands. To be realistic, Wallerstein
underdevelopment and backwardness. This inver suggested, was to realize that “we are living in the
sion of economic ideals carried into the first world transition“ to a “socialist mode of production, our
as well. Humanistic socialism replaced welfare future world government“ (1979: 136). The exis
state capitalism as the ultimate symbol of the tential question he put to his listeners was, “How
good. Capitalist economies were held to produce are we relating to it?“ He suggested that there
only great poverty and great wealth (Kolko 1962), were only two alternatives. They could relate to
and capitalist societies were viewed as sources of the imminent revolution “as rational militants con
ethnic conflict (Bonacich 1972), fragmentation, tributing to it or as clever obstructors of it (wheth
and alienation (Oilman 1971). Not market society er of the malicious or cynical variety).“ The rhetor
but socialism would provide wealth, equality, and ical construction of these alternatives demon
a restored community. strates how the inversion of binary coding (the
These recodings were accompanied by fundamen clear line between good and bad, with modernity
tal shifts in social narratives. Intellectual myths being polluted) and the creation of a newly heroic
were inflated upwards, becoming stories of collec narrative (the militantly millennial orientation to
tive triumph and heroic transformation. The pre future salvation) were combined.27* Wallerstein
sent was reconceived, not as the denouement of a made these remarks, it will be recalled, in a scien
long struggle but as a pathway to a different, much tific presentation, later published as “Moderniza
better world.25 In this heroic myth, actors and tion: requiescat in pace.“ He was one of the most
groups in the present society were conceived as be influential and original social scientific theorists of
ing “in struggle“ to build the future. The individu the anti-modernization theory phase.
alized, introspective narrative of romantic mod The social theories that this new generation of rad
ernism disappeared, along with ambiguity and iro ical intellectuals produced can and must be consid
ny as preferred social values (Gitlin 1987: 377- ered in scientific terms (see, e.g., van den Berg
406). Instead, ethical lines were sharply drawn and 1980 and Alexander 1987). Their cognitive
political imperatives etched in black and white. In achievements, indeed, became dominant in the
literary theory, the new criticism gave way to the 1970s and have remained hegemonic in contem-
new historicism (e.g., Veeser 1989). In psychology,
the moralist Freud was now seen as anti- Gorz, and the early Lukacs. By 1970, it had turned
repressive, erotic, and even polymorphously per into a forum for Leninism and Althusserianism. The
verse (Brown 1966). The new Marx was sometimes cover of its Fall, 1969, issue was emblazoned with the
a Leninist and other times a radical communitar solgan, “Militancy.“
ian; he was only rarely portrayed as a social demo 27 In order to forestall misunderstanding in regard to
crat or humanist in the earlier, modernist sense.26 the kind of argument I am making here, I should em
phasize that this and other correlations I am positing
between code, narrative, and theory constitute what
25 See, for example, the millennial tone of the contem Weber, drawing on Goethe, called “elective affini
porary articles collected in Smiling through the Apoc ties“ rather than historically, sociologically, or semi-
alypse: Esquire's History of the Sixties (1987). otically causal relations. Commitment to these theo
26 An illustrative case study of one dimension of this ries could, in principle, be induced by other kinds of
evolution would be the British New Left Review. Cre ideological formulations, and have been, in earlier
ated initially as a forum for disseminating humanistic times and other national milieux. Nor need these
Marxism - oriented towards existentialism and con particular versions of code and narrative always be
sciousness - vis-a-vis the mechanistic perspective of combined. Nonetheless, in the historical periods I
the Old Left, in the late 1960s it was an important fo consider here, the positions did mesh in complemen
rum for publishing Sartre, Gramsci, Lefebvre, tary ways.
porary social science long after the ideological to lash movements that generated conservative pub
talities in which they were initially imbedded have lics and brought right-wing governments to power.
since disappeared.28 Yet to study the decline of a The cultural-cum-political shift was so rapid as to
mode of knowledge, I would insist once again, de seem, once again, to represent some kind of
mands broader, extra-scientific considerations as historical-cum-epistemological break.29 Material
well. Theories are created by intellectuals in their ism replaced idealism among political influentials,
search for meaning. In response to continuing so and surveys reported increasingly conservative
cial change, generational shifts occur that can views among young people and university stu
make the scientific and ideological efforts of earli dents. Maoist ideologues - one thinks of Bernard-
er intellectual generations seem not only empiri Henri Levy (1977) in Paris and David Horowitz
cally implausible but psychologically shallow, po (1989) in the U.S. - became anticommunist nou-
litically irrelevant, and morally obsolete. velle philosophes and, some of them, neoconserv
By the end of the 1970s, the energy of the radical atives. Yippies became yuppies. For many intellec
social movements of the preceding period had dis tuals who had matured during the radicalism of the
sipated. Some of their demands become institu 1960s and 1970s, these new developments brought
tionalized; others were blocked by massive back- unbearable disappointment. Parallels with the
1950s were evident. The collective and heroic nar
28 This brief aside about the “lag“ in generational pro
rative of socialism once again had died, and the
duction is important to emphasize. It is primarily end of ideology seemed once again to be at hand.
new generations coming to political and cultural self-
consciousness that produces new intellectual ideolo
gies and theories, and, as Mannheim first empha 4. Postmodemization Theory:
sized, generational identities tend to remain constant Defeat, Resignation, and
despite shifts in historical time. The result is that, at Comic Detachment
any given point, the “intellectual milieu“ considered
as a totality will contain a number of competing ideo
logical formulations produced by historically-
“Postmodernism“ can be seen as an explanatory
generated archaeological formations. Insofar as social theory that has produced new middle range
there remain authoritative intellectual figures within models of culture (Lyotard 1984, Foucault 1976,
each generation, furthermore, earlier intellectual Huyssen 1984), science and epistemology (Rorty
ideologies will continue to socialize some members 1979), class (Bourdieu 1984), social action (Crespi
of succeeding generations. Authoritative socializa 1992), gender and family relations (Halpern 1990,
tion, in other words, exacerbates the lag effect, Seidman 1991), and economic life (Harvey 1989,
which is further increased by the fact that access to
the organizational infrastructures of socialization -
Lasch 1985). In each of these areas, and others,
e.g., control of graduate training programs in major postmodern theories have made original contribu
universities, editorships of leading journals - may be tions to the understanding of reality.30 It is not as a
attained by the authoritative members of generations
whose ideology/theory may already be “refuted“ by
developments that are occurring among younger 29 This sense of imminent, apocalyptic transformation
generations. These considerations produce layering was exemplified in the 1980s by the post-Marxist and
effects that make it difficult to recognize intellectual postmodern British magazine, Marxism Today\
successions until long after they are crystallized. which hailed, in millennial language, the arrival of
These inertial effects of generational formations sug “New Times.“
gest that new ideologies/theories may have to re Unless the Left can come to terms with those New
spond not only to the immediately preceding forma Times, it must live on the sidelines [...] Our world is
tion - which is their primary reference point - but in being remade [...] In the process our own identities,
a secondary way to all the formations that remain in our sense of self, our own subjectivities are being
the social milieu at the time of their formation. For transformed. We are in transition to a new era.
example, while postmodernism will be portrayed (Marxism Today; October 1988; quoted in Thompson
here as a response primarily to antimodemization 1992: 238)
theories of revolutionary intent, it is also marked by 30 A compendium of postmodernism’s middle level in
the need to posit the inadequacy of postwar modern novations in social scientific knowledge has been
ism and, indeed, of prewar Marxism. As I indicate compiled by Crook, Pakulski, and Waters 1992. For a
below, however, postmodernism’s responses to the cogent critique of the socio-economic propositions
latter movements are mediated by their primary re such middle-range theories of the postmodern age ei
sponse to the ideology/theory immediately preceding ther advance or assume, see Herpin 1993. For other
it. Indeed, it only understands the earlier movements critiques, Archer 1987, Giddens 1991, and Alexander
as they have been screened by the sixties generation. 1991,1992.
theory of the middle range, however, that postmo this exalted collective present, which had been
dernism has made its mark. These discussions have held to presage an even more heroic imminent fu
become significant only because they are taken to ture, as a period that was now passed. They de
exemplify broad new trends of history, social struc clared that it had been superseded not for reasons
ture, and moral life. Indeed, it is by intertwining of political defeat but because of the structure of
the levels of structure and process, micro and mac history itself.32 The defeat of utopia had threat
ro, with strong assertions about the past, present, ened a mythically incoherent possibility, namely
and future of contemporary life that postmodern that of historical retrogression. It threatened to un
ism has formed a broad and inclusive general theo dermine the meaning structures of intellectual life.
ry of society, one which, like the others we have With postmodern theory, this imminent defeat
considered here, must be considered in extra- could be transformed into an immanent one, a ne
scientific terms, not only as an explanatory source. cessity of historical development itself. The heroic
If we consider postmodernism as myth - not mere “grand narratives“ of the Left had merely been
ly as cognitive descriptions but as their coding and made irrelevant by history; they were not actually
narration into a “meaningful“ frame - we must defeated. Myth could still function. Meaning was
deal with it as the successor ideology to radical so preserved.
cial theory, animated by the failure of reality to un The most influential early attributions of postmo
fold in a manner that was consistent with the ex dernism were filled with frank revelations of theo
pectations generated by that antimodernization retical perplexity, testimonies to dramatic shifts in
creed. From this perspective, we can see that while reality, and expressions of existential despair.
postmodernism seems to be coming to grips with Frederick Jameson (1988: 25), for example, identi
the present and future, its horizon is fixed by the fied a “new and virtually unimaginable quantum
past. Initially (at least) an ideology of intellectual leap in technological alienation.“ Despite his
disappointment, Marxist and postMarxist intellec methodological commitments, Jameson resists the
tuals articulated postmodernism in reaction to the impulse to fall back on the neo-Marxism certain
fact that the period of heroic and collective radical ties of the earlier age. Asserting that shifts in the
ism seemed to be slipping away.31 They redefined productive base of society had created the super-
structural confusions of a transitional time, he be
31 In December, 1986, The Guardian, a leading inde moaned (ibid., 15) “the incapacity of our minds, at
pendent British newspaper broadly on the Left, ran a least at present, to map the great global multina
three-day long major series, “Modernism and Post- tional and decentered communication network in
Modernism.“ In his introductory article, Richard which we find ourselves caught as individual sub
Gott announced, by way of explanation, that “the jects.“ Referring to the traditional role of art as a
revolutionary impulses that had once galvanized pol vehicle for gaining cultural clarity, Jameson com
itics and culture had clearly become sclerotic“ (quot plained that this meaning-making reflex had been
ed in Thompson 1992: 222 ). Thompson’s own analy
sis of this event is particularly sensitive to the central blocked: we are “unable to focus our own present,
role played in it by the historical deflation of the he as though we have become incapable of achieving
roic revolutionary myth. aesthetic representations of our own current expe
“Clearly this newspaper thought the subject of an al rience“ (ibid., 20).33
leged cultural shift from modernism to post
modernism sufficiently important for it to devote ral reflection of its binary and narrative functions,
many pages and several issues to the subject. The such broad claims play a vital role in situating the
reason it was considered important is indicated by “postmodern“ age vis-a-vis the future and the past.
the sub-heading: “Why did the revolutionary move 32 “La revolution qu’anticipaient les avant-gardes et les
ment that lit up the early decades of the century fiz partis d’extr&me gauche and que ddnouncaient les
zle out. In a major series, Guardian critics analyze penseurs et les organisations de droit ne s’est pas
late twentieth century malaise“ ... “The subsequent produite. Mais les soci6t6s avanc£s n’en ont pas
articles made it even clearer that the cultural “mal moins subi£s une transformation radicale. Tel est le
aise“ represented by the shift from modernism was constat commun que font les sociologues ... qui ont
regarded as symptomatic of a deeper social and polit fait de la postmodernitie le th£me de leurs analyses.“
ical malaise.“ (ibid.). (Herpin 1993: 295)
The stretching of revolutionary fervor, and the very 33 This mood of pessimism should be compared to the
term “modernism,“ to virtually the entirety of the distinctly more optimistic tone of Jameson’s “Pref
pre-postmodernism twentieth century - sometimes, ace“ to The Political Unconscious, his collection of
indeed, to the entire post-Enlightenment era - is a essays written during the 1970s, in which he seeks to
tendency common to postmodernist theory. A natu- “anticipate ... those new forms of collective thinking
Yet, the intellectual meaning-making triumph of particularity, and localism as the embodiments of
mature postmodernism is already visible in Jame the good. As for narrative, the major historical
son’s depiction of this new order as privatized, propositions of postmodernism - the decline of the
fragmented, and commercial. With these terms, grand narrative and the return to the local (Lyo
the perplexities and blockages of rationality which tard 1984), the rise of the empty symbol, or simu
Jameson succeeded in articulating can be ex lacrum (Baudrillard 1983), the end of socialism
plained not as personal failure but as historical ne (Gorz 1982), the emphasis on plurality and differ
cessities based on reason itself. What threatened ence (Seidman 1991,1992) - are transparent repre
meaninglessness now becomes the very basis for sentations of a deflationary narrative frame. They
meaning; what has been constructed is a new pre are responses to the decline of “progressive“ ideol
sent and a new past. No wonder that Jameson de ogies and their utopian beliefs.
scribed (ibid., p. 15) postmodernism as first and
The resemblances to radical antimodernism, then,
foremost a “periodizing concept,“ suggesting that
are superficial and misleading. In fact, there is a
the term was created so that intellectuals and their
much more significant connection between post
audiences could make sense of these new times:
modernism and the period that preceded radical
“The new postmodernism expresses the inner truth
ism, that is, modernization theory itself. Modern
of that newly emergent social order of late capital
ization theory, we recall, was itself a deflationary
ism“ (ibid.).
ideology following an earlier heroic period of radi
Postmodern theory, then, may be seen, in rather cal quest. It, too, contained emphases on the pri
precise terms, as an attempt to redress the problem vate, the personal, and the local.
of meaning created by the experienced failure of
“the sixties.“ Only in this way can we understand While these similarities reveal how misleading the
why the very dichotomy between modern and intellectual self-representations of intellectual ide
postmodern was announced, and why the contents ologies can be, it is obviously true that the two ap
of these new historical categories are described in proaches differ in fundamental ways. These differ
the ways they are. From the perspective developed ences emerge from their positions in concrete his
here, the answers seem clear enough. Continuity torical time. The postwar liberalism that inspired
with the earlier period of antimodern radicalism is modernization theory followed upon a radical
maintained by the fact that postmodernism, too, movement that understood transcendence within a
takes “the modem“ as its explicit foe. In the binary progressivist frame, one which, while aiming to
coding of this intellectual ideology, modernity re radicalize modernism, hardly rejected it. Thus,
mains on the polluted side, representing “the oth while the romantic and ironic dimensions of post
er“ in postmodernism’s narrative tales. war liberalism deflated heroic modernism, its
movement away from radicalism made central as
Yet, in this third phase of postwar social theory, the
pects of modernism even more accessible.
contents of the modem are completely changed.
Radical intellectuals had emphasized the privacy Postmodernism, by contrast, followed upon a radi
and particularism of modem capitalism, its provin cal intellectual generation which had condemned
ciality, and the fatalism and resignation it pro not only liberal modernism but key tenets of the
duced. The post-modernization alternative they very notion of modernization as such. The New
posited was, not postmodern, but public, heroic, Left rejected the Old Left in part because it was
collective, and universal. It is precisely these latter wedded to the modernization project; they pre
qualities, of course, that postmodernization theory ferred the Frankfurt School (e.g., Jay 1970),
has condemned as the very embodiment of moder whose roots in German romanticism coincided
nity itself. In contrast, they have coded privacy, di more neatly with its own, antimodernist tone.
minished expectations, subjectivism, individuality, While postmodernism, then, is indeed a deflation
ary narrative vis-a-vis heroic radicalism, the speci
ficity of its historical position means that it must
and collective culture which lie beyond the bound place both heroic (radical) and romantic (liberal)
aries of our own world,“ describing them as the “yet versions of the modem onto the same negative
unrealized, collective, and decentered cultural pro side. Successor intellectuals tend to invert the bi
duction of the future, beyond realism and modern
ism alike“ (1980: 11). Scarcely a decade later, what nary code of the previously hegemonic theory. For
Jameson found to beyond modernism turned out to postmodernism, the new code, modernism: post
be quite different from the collective and liberating modernism, implied a larger break with “univer
cultural he had sought. salist“ Western values than did the traditionalism:
Jeffrey C. Alexander: Modem, Anti, Post, and Neo 181
modernism of the immediate postwar period or the ively or emotionally involved, can sit back and be
capitalist modernism: socialist anti-modernization amused. Baudrillard (1983) is the master of satire
dichotomy that succeeded it.34 and ridicule, as the entire Western world becomes
In narrative terms as well there are much greater Disneyland at large. In the postmodern comedy,
deflationary shifts. Although there remains, to be indeed, the very notion of actors is eschewed. With
sure, a romantic tenor in some strands of postmo tongue in cheek but a new theoretical system in his
dernist thought, and even collectivist arguments mind, Foucault announced the death of the sub
for heroic liberation, these “constructive“ versions ject, a theme that Jameson canonized with his an
(Thompson 1992; Rosenau 1992) focus on the per nouncement that “the conception of a unique self
sonal and the intimate and tend to be offshoots of and private identity [are] thing[s] of the past.“
social movements of the 1960s, e.g., gay and lesbi Postmodernism is the play within the play, an his
an “struggles,“ the women’s “movement,“ and the torical drama designed to convince its audiences
ecology activists like Greens. Insofar as they do that drama is dead and that history no longer ex
engage public policy, such movements articulate ists. What remains is nostalgia for a symbolized
their demands much more in the language of dif past.
ference and particularism (e.g., Seidman 1991 and Perhaps we may end this discussion with a snap
1992) than in the universalistic terms of the collec shot of Daniel Bell, the intellectual whose career
tive good. The principal, and certainly the most neatly embodies each of the scientific-cum-
distinctive thrust of the postmodern narrative, mythical phases of history I have thus far de
moreover, is strikingly different. Rejecting not on scribed. Bell came to intellectual self-
ly heroism but romanticism as well, it tends to be consciousness as a Trotskyist in the 1930s. For a
more fatalistic, critical, and resigned, in short time after World War II he remained in the heroic
more comically agnostic, than these more political anticapitalist mode of figures like C. Wright Mills,
movements of uplift and reform suggest. Rather whom he welcomed as a colleague at Columbia
than upholding the authenticity of the individual, University. His famous essay on the assembly line
postmodernism announced, via Foucault and Der and deskilled labor (1962b [1956, 1947]) demon
rida, the death of the subject. In Jameson’s (1988: strated continuity with prewar leftist work. By in
15) words, “the conception of a unique self and sisting on the concept of alienation, Bell commit
private identity [are] thing[s] of the past.“ Another ted himself to “capitalism“ rather than “industrial
departure from the earlier, more romantic version ism,“ thus championing epochal transformation
of modernism is the singular absence of irony. Ror- and resisting the postwar modernization line.
ty’s political philosophy is a case in point. Because Soon, however, Bell made the transition to real
he espouses irony and complexity (e.g., Rorty ism, advocating modernism in a more romantically
1985,1989), he maintains a political if not an epis individualist than radical socialist way. Although
temological liberalism, and because of these com The Coming of Post-Industrial Society appeared
mitments he must distance himself from the post only in 1973, Bell had introduced the concept as an
modernist frame. extension of Aron’s industrialization thesis nearly
Instead of romance and irony, what has emerged two decades before. Postindustrial was a period
full blown in postmodernism is the comic frame. ization that supported progress, modernization,
Frye calls comedy the ultimate equalizer. Because and reason while undermining the possibilities for
good and evil cannot be parsed, the actors - pro heroic transcendence and class conflict. Appearing
tagonists and antagonists - are on the same moral in the midst of antimodernist rebellion, The Com
level, and the audience, rather than being normat ing of Post-Industrial Society was reviewed with
perplexity and disdain by many intellectuals on the
antimodernist left, although its oblique relation
34 Postmodern theorists are fond of tracing their anti
modern roots to Romanticism, to anti-Enlight-
ship with theories of postscarcity society were
enment figures like Nietzsche, to Simmel, and to sometimes noted as well.
themes articulated by the early Frankfurt school. Yet What is so striking about this phase of Bell’s career,
the earlier, more traditionally Marxist rebellion however, is how rapidly the modernist notion of
against modernization theory often traced its lineage post-industrial society gave way to postmodern
in similar ways. As Seidman (1983) demonstrated be
ism, in content if not explicit form. For Bell, of
fore his postmodern turn, Romanticism itself had
significant universalizing strains, and between course, it was not disappointed radicalism that
Nietzsche and Simmel there exists a fundamental dis produced this shift but his disappointments with
agreement over the evaluation of modernity itself. what he came to call late modernism. When Bell
turned away from this degenerate modernism in lists of the strong linguistic turn - thinkers like
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, his sto Foucault, Bourdieu, Geertz, and Rorty - began to
ry had changed. Post-industrial society, once the outline their understandings long before postmo
epitome of modernism, now produced, not reason dernism appeared on the scene. Nevertheless,
and progress, but emotionalism and irrationalism, their emphasis on relativism and constructivism,
categories alarmingly embodied in sixties youth their principled antagonism to an identification
culture. Bell’s solution to this imminent self- with the subject, and their skepticism regarding
destruction of Western society was to advocate the the possibility of totalizing change make their con
return of the sacred (1977), a solution that exhibit tributions more compatible with postmodernism
ed the nostalgia for the past that Jameson would than either modernism or radical antimoderniza
later diagnose as a certain sign of the coming of the tion. Indeed, these theorists wrote in response to
postmodern age. their disappointment with modernism (Geertz and
The comparison of Bell’s postindustrial argument Rorty vis-a-vis Parsons and Quine), on the one
with Harvey’s post-Fordism (1989) is revealing in hand, and heroic antimodernism (Foucault and
this regard. Harvey takes similar developments in Bourdieu vis-a-vis Althusser and Sartre), on the
the productive arrangements of high-information other. Nonetheless, Geertz and Bourdieu can
capitalism but draws a far different conclusion scarcely be called postmodern theorists, and
about their effects on the consciousness of the age. strong culturalist theories cannot be identified with
Bell’s anti-Marxism - his (1978) emphasis on the the broad ideological sentiments that term post
asynchronicity of systems - allows him to posit re modernism implies.
bellion in the form of youth culture and to posit I would maintain here, as I have earlier in this pa
cultural salvation in the ideal of “the sacred re per, that scientific considerations are insufficient to
turn“ (cf., Eliade 1954). Harvey’s continued com account for shifts either towards or away from an
mitment to orthodox base-superstructure reason intellectual position. If, as I believe to be the case,
ing, by contrast, leads him to postulate fragmenta the departure from postmodernism has already be
tion and privatization as inevitable, and unstoppa gun, we must look closely, once again, at extra-
ble, results of the post-Fordist productive mode. scientific considerations, at recent events and so
Bell’s conservative attack on modernism embraces cial changes that seem to demand yet another new
nostalgia; Harvey’s radical attack on postmodern “world-historical frame.“
ism posits defeat.
Postmodern theory is still, of course, very much in
the making. As I have already mentioned, its mid 5. Neo-Modernism:
dle range formulations contain significant truths. Dramatic Inflation and Universal
Evaluating the importance of its general theoriz Categories
ing, by contrast, depends upon whether one places
poststructuralism under its wing.35*Certainly theo- In postmodern theory intellectuals have represent
ed to themselves and to society at large their re
sponse to the defeat of the heroic utopias of radical
35 It depends upon a number of other contingent deci social movements, a response that, while recogniz
sions as well, for example upon ignoring postmoder ing defeat, did not give up the cognitive reference
nism’s own claim that it does not have or advocate a to that utopic world. Every idea in postmodern
general theory. (See, e.g., my exchange with Seid- thought is a reflection upon the categories and
man [Alexander 1991 and Seidman 1991].) There is, false aspirations of the traditional collectivist nar
in addition, the much more general problem of rative, and for most postmodernists the distopia of
whether postmodernism can even be spoken of as a the contemporary world is the semantic result. Yet,
single point of view. I have taken the position here
that it can be so discussed, even while I have ac
while the hopes of Left intellectuals were dashed
knowledged the diversity of points of view within jt. by the late 1970s, the intellectual imagination of
There is no doubt, indeed, that each of the four theo others was rekindled. For when the Left lost, the
ries I examine here only exists, as such, via an act of
hermeneutical reconstruction. Such an ideal-type
methodology is, I would argue, not only philosophi should not obscure the fact that a typification and
cally justifiable (e.g., Gadamer 1975) but intellectu idealization is being made. In more empirical and
ally unavoidable, in the sense that the hermeneutics concrete terms, each historical period and each so
of common sense continually refers to “postmodern cial theory under review contained diverse patterns
ism“ as such. Nonetheless, these considerations and parts.
Right won and won big. In the 1960s and 1970s, world (see pp. 166 f, above) has had the same kind
the right was a backlash, reactive movement. By of destabilizing, de-ontologizing effects on many
1980 it had become triumphant and began to initi intellectuals as the other massive historical
ate far-reaching changes in Western societies. A “breaks“ I have discussed above. It has created, as
fact that has been conveniently overlooked by well, the same sense of imminence and the convic
each of the three intellectual generations we have tion that the “new world“ in the making demands
considered thus far - and most grievously by the a new and very different kind of social theory.37*
postmodernist movement that was historically co This negative triumph over state socialism has
terminous with it - is that the victory of the neo been reinforeced, morever, by the dramatic series
liberal Right had, and continues to have, massive of “positive successes“ during the 1980s for aggres
political, economic, and ideological repercussions sively capitalist market economies. This has been
around the globe. most often remarked upon (most recently by Ken
The most striking “success“ for the Right was, in nedy 1993) in connection with the NIC’s, the newly
deed, the defeat of Communism, which was not industrialized, extraordinarily dynamic Asian
only a political, military, and economic victory but, economies which have arisen in what was once cal
as I suggested in the introduction to this essay, a led the Third World. It is important not to underes
triumph on the level of the historical imagination timate the ideological effects of this world-
itself. Certainly there were objective economic ele historical fact: high level, sustainable transforma
ments in the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union, in tions of backward economies were achieved not by
cluding growing technological deficiencies, sinking socialist command economies but by zealously
export proceeds, and the impossibility of finding capitalist states.
desperately needed capital funds by switching to a What has often been overlooked, however, is that
strategy of internal growth (Muller 1992: 139). Yet during this same time frame the capitalist market
the final economic breakdown had a political was also reinvigorated, both symbolically and ob-
cause, for it was the computer-based military ex
pansion of America and its NATO allies, when
37 This sense of fundamental, boundary-destroying
combined with the right-wing inspired technology
break is clearly exhibited in the recent work of Ken
boycott, that brought the Soviet party dictatorship neth Jowitt, which searches for biblical imagery to
to its economic and political knees. While the lack communicate a sense of how widespread and threat
of access to documents makes any definitive judg ening is the contemporary genuine intellectual dis
ment decidedly premature, there seems no doubt orientation:
that these policies were, in fact, among the princi “For nearly half a century, the boundaries of interna
pal strategic goals of the Reagan and Thatcher gov tional politics and the identities of its national partic
ernments, and that they were achieved with signal ipants have been directly shaped by the presence of a
effect.36 Leninist regime world centered in the Soviet Union.
The Leninist extinction of 1989 poses a fundamental
This extraordinary, and almost completely unex challenge to these boundaries and identities...
pected triumph over what once seemed not only a Boundaries are an essential component of a recog
socially but an intellectually plausible alternative nizable and coherent identity ... The attenuation of
or dissolution of boundaries is more often than not a
traumatic event - all the more so when boundaries
36 The link between Glasnost and Perestroika and Pres have been organized and understood in highly cate
ident Ronald Reagan’s military build-up - particular gorical terms ... The Cold war was a “Joshua“ peri
ly his Star Wars project - has been frequently stressed od, one of dogmatically centralized boundaries and
by former Soviet officials who participated in the identities. In contrast to the biblical sequence, the
transition that began in 1985. For example: Leninist extinction of 1989 has moved the world from
“Former top soviet officials said Friday that the im a Joshua to a Genesis environment: from one cen
plications of then-President Reagan’s “Star Wars“ trally organized, rigidly bounded, and hysterically
proposal and the Chernobyl accident combined to concerned with impenetrable boundaries to one in
change Soviet arms policy and help end the Cold which territorial, ideological, and issue boundaries
War. Speaking at Princeton university during a con are attenuated, unclear, and confusing. We now in
ference on the end of the Cold War, the officials said habit a world that, while not “without form and
•.. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was con void,“ is one in which the major imperatives are the
vinced that any attempt to match Reagan’s Strategic same as in Genesis, “naming and bounding.““
Defense Initiative of 1983 ... could do irreparable Jowitt comparies the world-reshaping impact of the
harm to the Soviet economy.“ (Reuters News Ser vents of 1989 with those of the Battle of Hastings in
vice. February, 27, 1993) 1066.
jectively, in the capitalist West. This transpired not view, and a radical reversal of conventional wis
only in Thatcherite England and Reaganite Ameri dom is now underway. It is not only Communist
ca, but perhaps even more dramatically in the tyrannies that have opened up since the mid-1980s,
more “progressive“ and interventionist regimes but the very Latin American dictatorships that
like France and, subsequently, in countries like Ita seemed so “objectively necessary“ only an intellec
ly, Spain, and even more recently, in Scandinavia tual generation before. Even African dictatorships
itself. Not only was there, in other words, the obvi have recently begun to show signs of vulnerability
ous and ideologically portentous bankruptcy of to this shift in political discourse from authoritari
most of the world’s Communist economies, but anism to democracy.
there was the marked privatization of nationalized These developments have created social conditions
capitalist economies in both authoritarian- - and mass public sentiment - that would seem to
corporatist and socialist-democratic states. The belie the postmodern intellectuals’ coding of con
world-wide recession that followed the longest pe temporary (and future) society as fatalistic, pri
riod of sustained growth in capitalist history does vate, particularistic, fragmented, and local. They
not seem to have dampened the revival of market also would appear to undermine the deflated nar
commitments, as the recent triumph of Clinton’s rative frame of postmodernism, which has insisted
neoliberalism in the United States demonstrates either on the romance of difference or, more fun
very well. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the intellec damentally, on the idea that contemporary life can
tual successors to modernization theory, neo- only be interpreted in a comic way. And, indeed, if
Marxists like Baran and Sweezy (1964) and Man- we look closely at recent intellectual discourse, we
del (1968), announced the imminent stagnation of can observe, in fact, a return to many earlier, mod
capitalist economies and an inevitably declining ernist themes.
rate of profit.38 History has proved them wrong,
Because the recent revivals of market and democ
with far-reaching ideological results (Chirot 1992).
racy have occurred on a world-wide scale, and be
“Rightward“ developments on the more specifical cause they are categorically abstract and generaliz
ly political plane have been as far-reaching as those ing ideas, universalism has once again become a vi
on the economic. As I mentioned earlier, during able source for social theory. Notions of common
the late 1960s and 1970s it had become ideological ality and institutional convergence have re-
ly fashionable, and empirically justifiable, to ac emerged, and with them the possibilities for intel
cept political authoritarianism as the price of eco lectuals to provide meaning in an utopian way.39 It
nomic development. In the last decade, however, seems, in fact, that we are witnessing the birth of a
events on the ground seem to have challenged this
39 For example in his recent plea to fellow members of

38 One of the little noticed battle grounds of intellectual the academic Left - many if not most of whom are
ideology over the last 30 years has been the “shop now postmodern in their promotion of difference
ping center,“ a.k.a. “the mall.“ Making its appear and particularism - Todd Gitlin argues not only that
ance after World War II in the United States, it came a renewal of the project of universalism is necessary
to represent for many conservative liberals the con to preserve a viable critical intellectual politics but
tinuing vitality - contrary to the dire predictions of that such a movement has already begun:
Marxist thought in the 1930s - of “small business“ “If there is to be a Left in more than a sentimental
and the “petit bourgeoisie.“ Later, neo-Marxists like sense, its position ought to be: This desire for human
Mandel devoted a great deal of space to the shopping unity is indispensable. The ways, means, basis, and
centers, suggesting that this new form of organiza costs are a subject for disciplined conversation ...
tion had staved off capitalism’s ultimate economic Now, alongside the indisputable premise that knowl
stagnation, describing it as the organizational equiv edge of many kinds is specific to time, place, and in
alent of advertising’s “artificial creation“ of “false terpretive community, thoughtful critics are placing
needs.“ In the 1980s, these same sprawling congeries the equally important premise that there are unities
of mass capitalism, now transformed into upscale but in the human condition and that, indeed, the exis
equally plebeian malls, became the object of attack tence of common understandings is the basis of all
from postmodernists, who saw them not as wily stop communication (= making common) across bound
gaps to stagnation but as perfect representations of aries of language and history and experience. Today,
the fragmentation, commercialism, privatism, and some of the most exciting scholarship entails efforts
retreatism that marked the end of Utopian hope (and to incorporate new and old knowledge together in
possibly of history itself). The most famous example unified narratives. Otherwise there is no escape from
of the latter is Jameson (e.g., 1988) on the Los Ange solipsism, whose political expression cannot be the
les Bonaventure Hotel. base of liberalism or radicalism.“ (Gitlin 1993:36-7).
fourth postwar version of myothopeic social market processes that is markedly different from
thought. “Neo-modernism“ (cf. Tiryakian 1991) the left-leaning intellectuals of earlier times.
will serve as a rough-and-ready characterization of Among the intellectual advocates of “market so
this phase of postmodernization theory until a cialism,“ there has been a similar change. Kornai,
term appears that represents the new spirit of the for example, has expressed distinctly fewer reser
times in a more imaginative way. vations about free markets in his more recent writ
In response to economic developments, different ings than in the path-breaking works of the 1970s
groupings of contemporary intellectuals have re and 1980s that brought him to fame.
inflated the emancipatory narrative of the market, This neo-modern revival of market theory is also
in which they emplot a new past (antimarket soci manifest in the rebirth and redefinition of econom
ety) and a new present/future (market transition, ic sociology. In terms of research program, Grano-
full-blown capitalism) that makes liberation de vetter’s (1974) earlier celebration of the strengths
pendent upon privatization, contracts, monetary of the market’s “weak ties“ has become a domi
inequality, and competition. On one side, a much nant paradigm for studying economic networks
enlarged and more activist breed of intellectual (e.g., Powell 1991), one that implicitly rejects
conservatives has emerged. Although their policy postmodern and antimodern pleas for strong ties
and political concerns have not, as yet, greatly af and local communities. His later argument for the
fected the discourse of general social theory, there “imbeddedness“ (1985) of economic action has
are exceptions that indicate the potential is there. transformed (e.g., Granovetter and Swedberg
James Coleman’s massive Foundations o f Social 1992) the image of the market into a social and in
Theory (1989), for example, has a self-consciously teractional relationship that has little resemblance
heroic cast; it aims to make neo-market, rational to the deracinated, capitalist exploitator of the
choice the basis not only for future theoretical past. Similar transformations can be seen in more
work but for the re-creation of a more responsive, generalized discourse. Adam Smith has been un
law-abiding, and less degraded social life.40 dergoing an intellectual rehabilitation (Hall 1986;
Much more significant is the fact that within liberal Heilbroner 1986; Boltanski/Thevenot 1991: 60-84;
intellectual life, among the older generation of dis Boltanski 1993: 38-98). Shumpter’s “market real
illusioned Utopians and the younger intellectual ism“ has been revived; the individaulism of We
groups as well, a new and positive social theory of ber’s marginalist economics has been celebrated
markets has reappeared. For many politically en (Holton/Turner 1989); so has the market-
gaged intellectuals, too, this has taken the theoret acceptance that permeates Parsons’ theoretical
ical form of the individualistic, quasi-romantic work (Turner/Holton 1986 and Holton 1992).
frame of rational choice. Employed initially to In the political realm, neo-modernism has
deal with the disappointing failures of working emerged in an even more powerful way, as a result,
class consciousness (e.g., Wright 1985 and Pze- no doubt, of the fact that it has been the political
worski 1985; cf. Elster 1989), it has increasingly revolutions of the last decade that have reintro
served to explain how state communism, and capi duced narrative in a truly heroic form and chal
talist corporatism, can be transformed into a lenged the postmodern deflation in the most direct
market-oriented system that is liberating or, at way. The movements away from dictatorship, mo
least, substantively rational (Pzeworski 1991, tivated in practice by the most variegated of con
Moene/Wallerstein 1992, Nee 1989). While other cerns, have been articulated mythically as a vast,
politically engaged intellectuals have appropriated unfolding “drama of democracy“ (Sherwood
market ideas in less restrictive and more collectiv 1994), literally as an opening up of the spirit of hu
ist ways (e.g., Szelenyi 1988, Friedland/Robertson manity. The melodrama of social good triumphing,
1990), their writings, too, betray an enthusiasm for or almost triumphing, over social evil - which Pe
ter Brooke (1984) so brilliantly discovered to be
the root of the nineteenth century narrative form -
40 The massive negative response among contemporary has populated the symbolic canvas of the late 20-
social theorists to Coleman’s tome - the review sym century West with heroes and conquests of truly
posium in Theory and Society (e.g., Alexander 1991) world-historical scope. This drama started with the
is not an untyptical example - is less an indication epochal struggle of Lech Walesa, and what seemed
that rational choice theory is being massively reject
ed than an expression of the fact that neo-modernism to be virtually the entire Polish nation (Tiryakian
is not, at this time, sympathetic to a conservative po 1988) against Poland’s coercive party-state. The
litical tilt. This may not be true in the future. day-to-day dramaturgy that captured public imagi
nation ended initially in Solidarity’s inexplicable connected with these movements, like Cohen and
defeat. Eventually, however, good did triumph Arato and Keane (1989ab). Subsequently, they uti
over evil, and the dramatic symmetry of the heroic lized the concept to begin theorizing in a manner
narrative was complete. Mikhail Gorbachev began that sharply demarcated their own “left“ theoriz
his long march through the Western dramatic imag ing from the anti-modernization, anti-formal de
ination in 1984. His increasingly loyal world-wide mocracy writings of an earlier day.
audience fiercely followed his epochal struggles in Stimulated by these writers and also by the English
what eventually became the longest running public translation (1989) of Habermas’s early book on the
drama in the postwar period. This grand narrative bourgeois public sphere, debates about pluralism,
- which might be entitled “The Making, Unmak fragmentation, differentiation, and participation
ing, and Resurrection of an American Hero: Gor have become the new order of the day. Frankfurt
bachev and the Discourse of the Good“ (Alexan- theorists, Marxist social historians, and even some
der/Sherwood, ms.) - produced cathartic reactions post-modernists have become democratic theorists
in its audience, which the press called “Gorby- under the sign of the “public sphere“ (see, e.g.,
mania“ and Dürkheim would have labelled the the essays by Postpone, Ryan, and Eley in Cal
collective effervescence that only symbols of the houn 1992 and the more recent writings of Held,
sacred inspire. This drama was reprised in what the e.g., 1987).41*Communitarian and internalist polit
mass publics, media, and elites of Western coun ical philosophers, like Walzer (1991, 1992), have
tries construed as the equally heroic achievements taken up the concept to clarify the universalist yet
of Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, and later of non-abstract dimensions in their theorizing about
Boris Yeltsin, the tank-stopping hero who succeed the good. For conservative social theorists (e.g.,
ed Gorbachev in Russia’s post-Communist phase Banfield forthcoming, Wilson forthcoming, and
(Alexander/Sherwood 1992). Similar experiences Shils 1991 and forthcoming), civil society is a con
of exaltation and renewed faith in the moral effica cept that implies civility and harmony. For neo
cy of democratic revolution were produced by the functionalists (e.g., Sciulli 1992, Mayhew 1992,
social drama that took place in 1989 in Hanamen and Alexander 1992), it is an idea that denotes the
Square, with its strong ritualistic overtones (Chan possibility of theorizing conflicts over equality and
1994) and its classically tragic denouement. inclusion in a less anticapitalist way. For old functi
It would be astonishing if this reinflation of mass onalists (e.g., Inkeles 1991), it is an idea that sug
political drama did not manifest itself in equally gests that formal democracy has been a requisite
marked shifts in intellectual theorizing about poli for modernization all along.
tics. In fact, in a manner that parallels the rise of But whatever the particular perspective that has
the “market,“ there has been the powerful re- framed this new political idea, its neo-modern sta
emergence of theorizing about democracy. Liberal tus is plain to see. Theorizing in this manner sug
ideas about political life, which emerged in the gests that contemporary societies either possess,
eighteen and nineteenth centuries and which were or must aspire to, not only an economic market but
displaced by the “social question“ of the great in a distinctive political zone, an institutional field of
dustrial transformation, seem like contemporary universal if contested domain (Touraine 1994). It
ideas again. Dismissed as historically anachronistic provides a common empirical point of referent,
in the anti- and post-modern decades, they have which implies a familiar coding of citizen and ene
become quite suddenly ä la mode (cf., Alexander
1991).
41 There is clear evidence that this transformation is
This re-emergence has taken the form of the reviv world-wide in scope. In Quebec, for example, Ar-
al of the concept of “civil society,“ the informal, naud Sales, who worked earlier in a strongly Marxist
non-state, and non-economic realm of public and tradition, now insists on a universal relatedness
personal life that Tocqueville, for example, de among conflict groups and incorporates the language
fined as vital to the maintenance of the democratic of “public“ and “civil society“:
state. Rising initially from within the intellectual “If, in their multiplicity, associations, unions, cor
debates that helped spark the social struggles porations, and movements have always defended
and represented very diversified opinions, it is prob
against authoritarianism in Eastern Europe (cf., able that, despite the power of economic and statist
Arato and Cohen 1992) and Latin American (Ste systems, the proliferation of groups founded on a tra
pan 1985), the term was “secularized“ and given dition, a way of life, an opinion or a protest has prob
more abstract and more universal meaning by ably never been so broad and so divesified as it is at
American and European intellectuals who were the end of the twentieth century.“ (Sales 1991: 308).
my, and allows history to be narrated, once again, differences in second order representations, the
in a teleological manner that gives the drama of differences between present day society and the
democracy full force. immediate postwar period are enormous. Faced
with the rapid onrush of “markets“ and “democra
cy,“ and the rapid collapse of their opposites, it has
6. Neo-Modernism and Social Evil: proven difficult to formulate equally universal and
Nationalism as Polluted Representation far-reaching representations of the profane. The
question is this: Is there an oppositional movement
This problem of the demarcation of civil as op or geo-political force that is a convincingly and
posed to uncivil society points to issues that go be fundamentally dangerous, that is a “world-
yond the narrating and explanatory frameworks of historical“ threat to the “good“? The once power
neo-modern theory that I have described thus far. ful enemies of universalism seemed to be historical
Romantive and heroic narratives that describe the relics, out of sight and out of mind, laid low by an
triumph, or possible triumph, of markets and de historical drama that seems unlikely soon to be re
mocracies have a reassuringly familiar form. When versed. It was for this semantic reason that, in the
we turn to the binary coding of this emerging his interim period after “1989“, many intellectuals,
torical period, however, certain problems arise. and certainly broad sections of Western publics,
Given the resurgence of universalism, of course, experienced a strange combination of optimism
one can be confident that what is involved is a and self-satisfaction, energetic commitment and
specification of the master code, described earlier moral disrepair.
as the discourse of civil society. Yet, while this al In comparison with the modernization theory of
most archetypical symbolization of the requisites the postwar years, neo-modern theory involves
and antonyms of democracy establishes general fundamental shifts in both symbolic time and sym
categories, historically specific “social representa bolic space. In neo-modern theory, the profane
tions“ (Moscovici 1984) must also be developed to can neither be represented by an evolutionarily
articulate the concrete categories of good and evil preceding period of traditionalism nor identified
in a particular time and place. In regard to these with the world outside of North America and Eu
secondary elaborations, what strikes one is how rope. In contrast with the postwar modernization
difficult it has been to develop a set of binary cate wave, the current one is global and inter-national
gories that is semantically and socially compelling, rather than regional and imperial, a difference ar
a black-versus-white contrast that can function as a ticulated in social science by the contrast between
successor code to postmodern: modern or, for that early theories of dependency (Frank 1966) and
matter, to the socialist: capitalist and modern: tra more contemporary theories of globalization
ditional symbolic sets that were established by ear (Robertson 1992). The social and economic rea
lier intellectual generations, and which by no sons for this change center on the rise of Japan,
means have entirely lost their efficacy today.42 which this time around has gained power, not as
To be sure, the symbolization of the good does not one of Spencer’s military societies - a category that
present a real problem. Democracy and universal could be labelled backward in an evolutionary
ism are key terms, and their more substantive em sense - but as a civilized commercial society.
bodiments are free market, individualism, and hu Thus, for the first time in 500 years (see Kennedy
man rights. The problem comes in establishing the 1987), it has become impossible for the West to
profane side. The abstract qualities that pollution dominate Asia, either economically or culturally.
must embody are obvious enough. Because they When this objective factor is combined with the
are produced by the principle of difference, they pervasive de-Christianization of Western intellec
closely resemble the qualities that were opposed to tuals, we can understand the remarkable fact that
modernization in the postwar period, qualities that “orientalism“ - the symbolic pollution of Eastern
identified the pollution of “traditional“ life. But civilization that Said (1978) articulated so tellingly
despite the logical similarities, earlier ideological scarcely more than a decade ago - seems no longer
formulations cannot simply be taken up again. to be a forceful spatial or temporal representation
Even if they effectuate themselves only through in Western ideology or social theory, although it
has by no means entirely disappeared.43 A social
42 See my earlier remarks (n. 28, above) on the inertial
effects of intellectual ideologies and on the social 43 This would seem, at first glance, to confirm Said’s
conditions that exacerbate them. quasi-Märxist insistence that it was the rise of the
scientific translation of this ideological fact, which justified his opposition not by pointing to the dis
points the way to a post- postmodern, or neo tinctive worth of national or political ideology but
modern code, is Eisenstadt’s (1987: vii) call for “a by upholding universality: “Anew world order has
far-reaching reformulation of the vision of mod to be based on authentically general principles, not
ernization, and of modem civilizations.“ While on the selectively applied might of one country“
continuing to code modern in a thoroughly posi (Said 1991). More significantly, Said denounced
tive way, this conceptualization explains it, not as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the “Arab
the end of an evolutionary sequence, but as a high world,“ representing them in particularizing cate
ly successfully globalizing movement. gories that polluted them as the enemies of univer-
Instead of perceiving modernization as the final stage in salism itself.
the fulfillment of the evolutionary potential common to The traditional discourse of Arab nationalism, to say
all societies - of which the European experience was the nothing of the quite decrepit state system, is inexact, un
most important and succinct manifestation and para responsive, anomalous, even comic ... Today’s Arab
digm - modernization (or modernity) should be viewed media are a disgrace. It is difficult to speak the plain
as one specific civilization or phenomenon. Originating truth in the Arab world ... Rarely does one find rational
in Europe, it has spread in its economic, political and analysis - reliable statistics, concrete and undoctored
ideological aspects all over the world ... The crystalliza descriptions of the Arab world today with its ... crush
tion of this new type of civilization was not unlike the ing mediocrity in science and many cultural fields. Alle
spread of the great religions, or the great imperial ex gory, complicated symbolism and innuendo substitute
pansions, but because modernization almost always for common sense, (ibid.)
combined economic, political, and ideological aspects
and forces, its impact was by far the greatest, (ibid.) Wlien Said concludes that there appears to be a
Original modernization theory transformed We “remorseless Arab propensity to violence and ex
ber’s overtly Western-centric theory of world reli tremism,“ the end of occidentalism seems com
gions into a universal account of of global change plete.
that still culminated in the social structure and cul Because the contemporary re-coding of the antith
ture of the postwar Western world. Eisenstadt pro esis of universalism can be geographically repre
poses to make modernization itself the historical sented neither as non Western nor temporally lo
equivalent of a world religion, which relativizes it, cated in an earlier time, the social sacred of neo
on the one hand, and suggests the possibility of se modernism cannot, paradoxically, be represented
lective indigenous appropriation (Hannerz 1987), as “modernization.“ In the ideological discourse of
on the other. contemporary intellectuals, it would seem almost
The other side of this decline of orientalism among as difficult to employ this term as it is to identify
Western theorists is what seems to be the virtual the good with “socialism.“ Not modernization but
disappearance of “third world-ism“ - what might democratization, not the modern but the market -
be called occidentalism - from the vocabulary of these are the terms that the new social movements
intellectuals who speak from within, or on behalf of the neo-modern period employ. These difficul
of, developing countries. A remarkable indication ties in representation help to explain the new sa-
of this discursive shift can be found in an opinion liency of non-national, international organizations
piece that Edward Said published in the New York (Thomas/Louderdale 1988), a salience that points,
Times protesting the imminent Allied air war in turn, to elements of what the long-term repre
against Iraq in early 1991. While reiterating the fa sentation of a viable ideological antinomy might
miliar characterization of American policy toward be. For European and American intellectuals, and
Iraq as the result of an “imperialist ideology,“ Said* for those from outside of the West as well, the
United Nations and European Community have
taken on new legitimacy and reference, providing
West’s actual power in the world - imperialism - that institutional manifestations of the new universal
allowed the ideology of orientalism to proceed. What
Said does not recognize, however, is that there is a
ism that transcend earlier great divides.
more general code of sacred and profane categories The logic of these telling institutional and cultural
of which the “social representations“ of orientalism shifts is that “nationalism“ - not traditionalism,
is an historically specific subset. The discourse of civ communism, or the “East“ - is coming to repre
il society is an ideological formation that proceeded
imperialism and that informed the pollution of di sent the principal challenge to the newly universal
verse categories of historically encountered others - ized discourse of the good. Nationalism is the
Jews, woman, slaves, proletarians, homosexuals, name intellectuals and publics are now increasing
and more generally enemies - in quite similar terms. ly giving to the negative antinomies of civil society.
The categories of the “irrational,“ “conspiratori It is the failure to confirm such a semantic and or
al,“ and “repressive“ are taken to be synonymous ganizational analogy with communism that has
with forceful expressions of nationality, and equat prevented religious fundamentalism from occupy
ed with primordiality and uncivilized social forms. ing a similar categorically polluting role. It has
That civil societies have always themselves taken a been unable to do so despite the currency of
national form is being conveniently neglected, fundamentalism-versus-modernity in everyday
along with the continuing nationalism of many speech (e.g., Barber 1992) and the myriad exam
democratic movements themselves.44 It is true, of ples of its very real dangers to democracy, markets,
course, that in the geo-political world that has so and social differentiation that are ready to hand.45
suddenly been re-formed, it is the social move On the one hand, because intellectuals in demo
ments and armed rebellions for national self- cratic nations are continually criticising the renew
determination that trigger military conflicts that al of fundamentalist forms of religiosity in their
can engender large scale wars. democratic countries, it is difficult for them to
Is it any wonder, then, that nationalism is now rou equate secular with democratic or to place funda
tinely portrayed as the successor of communism, mentalist religiosity completely outside the pale of
not only in the semantic but in the organizational democratic life. On the other hand, postcommun
sense? This equation is made by high intellectuals, ist nations are not particularly fundamentalist; nor
not only in the popular press. “Far from extin has fundamentalism posed the same kind of real
guishing nationalism,“ Liah Greenfeld (1992) politik basis for the renewal of large scale conflict
wrote recently in The New Republic, “communism as the militant assertion of national rights.
perpetuated and reinforced the old nationalist val In Winter, 1994, Theory and Society, a bellweather
ues. And the intelligentsia committed to these val of intellectual currents in Western social theory,
ues is now turning on the democratic regime it in devoted a special issue to nationalism. In their in
advertently helped to create.“ troduction to the symposium, John Comaroff and
The democratic intelligentsia, which took shape in op Paul Stern make particularly vivid the link be
position to the Communist state, is, in fact, much more tween nationalism-as-pollution and nationalism-
motivated by nationalist than by democratic concerns as-object-of-social-science.
... To accomplish a transition from communism to de Nowhere have the signs of the quickening of contem
mocracy, Russia needs to renounce the traditions that porary history, of our misunderstanding and mispredic
made communism possible: the anti-democratic values tion of the present, been more clearly expressed than in
of its nationalism, (ibid.) the ... assertive renaissance of nationalisms ... World
It does not seem surprising that some of the most events over the past few years have thrown a particular
promising younger generation of American social ly sharp light on the darker, more dangerous sides of na
theorists have shifted from concerns with modern tionalism and claims to sovereign identity. And, in so do
ization, critical theory, and citizenship to issues of ing, they have revealed how tenuous is our grasp of the
phenomenon. Not only have these events confounded
identity and nationalism. In addition to Greenfeld, the unsuspecting world of scholarship. They have also
one might note the new work of Rogers Brubaker, shown a long heritage of social theory and prognostica
whose studies of central European and Russian na tion to be flatly wrong. (Comaroff and Stern 1994: 35)
tionalism (e.g., Brubaker 1994) make similar links While these theorists do not, of course, deconst
between Soviet communism and contemporary na ruct their empirical argument by explicitly relating
tionalism, although from a less culturalist, more it to the rise of a new phase of myth and science, it
neo-institutional perspective. One might note also is noteworthy that they do insist on linking the new
some of the recent writings of Craig Calhoun (e.g., understanding of nationalism to the rejection of
1992). Marxism, modernization theory, and postmodern
thought (ibid., 35-37). In their own contribution
44 Exceptions to this amnesia can, however, be found in to this special revival issue, Greenfeld and Chirot
the current debate, particularly among those French insist on the fundamental antithesis between de
social theorists who remain strongly influenced by mocracy and nationalism in the strongest terms.
the Republicain tradition. See, for example, Michel After discussing Russia, Germany, Roumania, Syr-
Wieviorka’s (1993: 23-70) lucid argument for a con
tested and double-sided understanding of national
ism and Dominique Schnapper’s (1994) powerful de 45 Most recently, see Khosrokhavar’s (1993) illumating
fense of the national character of the democratic discussion of how the negative utopia of shi’ite reli
state. For another good recent statement of this gion undermine the more universalistic strains in the
more balanced position, see Hall 1993. Iranian revolution.
ia, Iraq, and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, they states from discriminating against national minori
write: ties. The symbolic crux of his argument is the anal
The cases we discuss here show that the association be ogy between two categories of pollution. “Previ
tween certain types of nationalism and aggressive, bru ously, victims of totalitarian regimes and ideolo
tal behavior is neither coincidental nor inexplicable. Na gies needed protection,“ Kozyrev told the U.N.
tionalism remains the world’s most powerful, general, General Assembly. “Today, ever more often one
and primordial basis of cultural and political identity. Its needs to counter aggressive nationalism that
range is still growing, not diminishing, throughout the
world. And in most places, it does not take an individu emerges as a new global threat.“46
alistic or civic form. (Greenfeld/Chirot 1994: 123).
The new social representation of nationalism and 7. Modernization Redux?
pollution, based upon the symbolic analogy with The Hubris of Linearity and the Dangers
Communism, also has permeated the popular of Theoretical Amnesia
press. Serbia’s expansionist military adventures
have provided a crucial field of collective represen In 1982 (p. 144), when Anthony Giddens confi
tation. See, for example, the categorical relation dently asserted that “modernization theory is
ships that are established in the following editorial based upon false premises,“ he was merely reiter
from the New York Times. ating the common social scientific sense of the day,
Communism can pass easily into nationalism. The two or at least his generation’s version of it. When he
creeds have much in common. Each offers a simple key added that the theory had “served ... as an ideo
to tangled problems. One exalts class, the other ethnic logical defence of the dominance of Western capi
kinship. Each blames real grievances on imagined ene talism over the rest of the world,“ he reproduced
mies. As a Russian informant shrewdly remarked to Da
vid Shipler in The New Yorker: “They are both ideolo
the common understanding of why this false theo
gies that liberate people from personal responsibility. ry had once been believed. Today both these senti
They are united around some sacred [read profane] ments seem anachronistic. Modernization theory
goal.“ In varying degrees and with different results, old (e.g., Parsons 1963) stipulated that the great civili
Bolsheviks have become new nationalists in Serbia and zations of the world would converge towards the
many former Soviet republics. institutional and cultural configurations of Western
The Times editorial writer further codes the histor society. Certainly we are witnessing something
ical actors by analogizing the current break-up of very much like this process today, and the enthusi
Czechoslovakia to the nationalism that preceded asm it has generated is hardly imposed by Western
it, and which ultimately issued from World War I. domination.
And now the same phenomenon has surfaced in Czecho The sweeping ideological and objective transfor
slovakia ... There is a ... moral danger, described long mations described in the preceding section have
ago by Thomas Masaryk, the founding president of begun to have their theoretical effect, and the the
Czechoslovakia, whose own nationalism was joined in oretical gauntlet that the various strands of neo
separably to belief in democracy. “Chauvinism is no modernism have thrown at the feet of postmodern
where justified,“ he wrote in 1927, “least of all in our theory are plain to see. Shifting historical condi
country ... To a positive nationalism, one that seeks to tions have created fertile ground for such post-
raise a nation by intensive work, none can demur. Chau
vinism, racial or national intolerance, not love of one’s postmodern theorizing, and intellectuals have re
own people, is the foe of nations and of humanity.“ Ma- sponded to these conditions by revising their earli
saryk’s words are a good standard for judging tolerance er theories in creative and often far-reaching ways.
on both sides. (June 16, 1992; reprinted in the Interna Certainly, it would be premature to call neo
tional Herald Tribune) modernism a “successor theory“ to postmodern
The analogy between nationalism and commu ism. It has only recently become crystallized as an
nism, and their pollution as threats to the new in intellectual alternative, much less emerged as the
ternationalism, is even made by government offi
cials of formerly Communist states. For example, 46 In a telling observation on the paradoxical relation
in late September, 1992, Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s ship of nationalism to recent events, Wittrock (1991)
Foreign Minister, appealed to the United Nations notes that when West Germany pressed for re
unification, it both affirmed the abstract universal-
to consider setting up international trusteeships to ism of notions like freedom, law, and markets and, at
oversee the move to independence by former Sovi the same time, the ideology of nationalism in its most
et non-Slavic republics. Only a UN connection, he particularistic, ethnic and linguistic sense, the notion
argued, could prevent the newly independent that the “German people“ could not be divided.
victor in this ideological-cum-theoretical fight. It is ditional resources can provide greatest leverage,“
unclear, further, whether the movement is nour the article displays the kind of over-confidence in
ished by a new generation of intellectuals or by controlled social change that marked the hubris of
fragments of currently competing generations who postwar modernization thought. When Lipset
have found in neo-modernism a unifying vehicle to (1990) claims the lesson of the second great transi
dispute the postmodern hegemony over the con tion as the failure of the “middle way“ between
temporary field. Despite these qualifications, how capitalism and socialism, he is no doubt correct in
ever, it must be acknowledged that a new and very an important sense, but the formulation runs the
different current of social theorizing has emerged danger of reinforcing the tendentious, either/or di
on the scene. chotomies of earlier thinking in a manner that
With this success, however, there comes the grave could justify not only narrow self-congratulation
danger of theoretical amnesia about the problems but unustified optimism about imminent social
of the past. Retrospective verifications of modern change. Jeffrey Sachs and other simpliste exposi
ization theory have begun in earnest. One of the tors of the “big bang“ approach to transition seem
most fulsome and acute apologias appeared re to be advocating a rerun of Rostow’s earlier “take
cently in the European Journal o f Sociology. “With off“ theory. Like that earlier species of moderniza
an apparently more acute sense of reality,“ Muller tion idea, this new monetarist modernism throws
(1992: 111) writes, “the sociological theory of mo concerns of social solidarity and citizenship, let
dernity had recorded the long-term developments alone any sense of historical specificity (Leijonhof-
within the Eastern European area, currently tak vud 1993), utterly to the winds.
ing place in a more condensed form, long before While the recent social scientific formulations of
they were empirically verifiable.“ Muller adds, for market and democracy discussed above avoid the
good measure, that “the grand theory constantly most egregious distortions of the kind I have just
accused of lacking contact with reality seemingly described, the universalism of their categories, the
proves to possess predictive capacity - the classical heroism of their Zeitgeist, and the dichotomous
sociological modernization theory of Talcott Par strictures of their codes make the underlying prob
sons“ (ibid., original italics). Distinguished theo lems difficult to avoid. Theories of market transi
rists who were once neo-Marxist critics of capitalist tion, even in the careful hands of a scholar as con
society, like Bryan Turner, have become believers, scientious as Victor Nee, sometimes suggests a lin
defending Western citizenship (Turner 1986) earity and rationality that historical experience be
against radical egalitarianism and lauding Parsons lies. Civil society theory, despite the extraordinary
for his “anti-nostalgic“ endorsement (Holton/Tur- self-consciousness of philosophers like Cohen and
ner 1986) of the basic structures of modern life. Walzer, seems unable to theorize empirically the
Among former Communist apparatchiks them demonic, anti-civil forces of cultural life that it
selves, there is growing evidence (i.e., Borko cited normatively proscribes (cf., Alexander 1994 and
in Muller 1992: 112) that similar “retro-dictions“ Sztompka 1991).
about the convergence of capitalist and communist If there is to be a new and more successful effort at
societies are well underway, tendencies that have constructing a social theory about the fundamen
caused a growing number of “revisits“ to Schum tally shared structures of contemporary societies
peter as well. (cf., Sztompka 1993: 136-41), it will have to avoid
The theoretical danger here is that this enthusiastic these regressive tendencies, which resurrect mod
and long overdue re-appreciation of some of the ernization ideas in their most simplistic forms. In
central thrusts of postwar social science might ac stitutional structures like democracy, law, and mar
tually lead to the revival of convergence and mod ket are functional requisites if certain social com
ernization theories in their earlier forms. In his re petencies are to be achieved and certain resources
flections on the recent transitions in Eastern Eu to be acquired; they are not, however, either his
rope, Habermas (1990: 4) employs such evolution torical inevitabilities or linear outcomes, nor are
ary phrases as “rewinding the reel“ and “rectifying they social panaceas for the problems of non
revolution.“ Inkeles’ (1991) recent tractatus to economic subsystems or groups (see, e.g., Rues-
American policy agencies is replete with such con chemeyer 1992). Social and cultural differentiation
vergence homilies as a political “party should not may be an ideal-typical pattern that can be analyti
seek to advance its objectives by extra political cally reconstructed over time; however, whether or
means.“ Sprinkled with advice about “the impor not any particular differentiation occurs - market,
tance of locating ... the distinctive point where ad state, law, or science - depends on the normative
aspirations (e.g., Sztompka 1991), strategic posi their structure with regard to well-defined univer
tion, history and powers of particular social sal exigencies, than by the fact of their involve
groups. No matter how socially progressive in it ment in the issue of universalization“ as such (ital
self, morever, differentiation displaces as much as ics added).
it resolves, and can create social upheaval on an Perhaps it is wise to acknowledge that it is a re
enormous scale. Social systems may well be plural newed sense of involvement in the project of uni
istic and the causes of change multidimensional; at versalism, rather than some lipid sense of its con
any given time and in any given place, however, a crete forms, that marks the character of the new
particular subsystem and the group that directs it - age in which we live. Beneath this new layer of the
economic, political, scientific, or religious - may social top soil, moreover, there lies the tangled
successfully dominate and submerge the others in roots and richly marbled subsoil of earlier intellec
its name. Globalization is, indeed, a dialectic of in- tual generations, whose ideologies and theories
digenization and cosmopolitanism, but cultural have not ceased to be alive. The struggles between
and political asymmetries remain between more these interlocutors can be intimidating and confus
and less developed regions, even if they are not in ing, not only because of the intrinsic difficulty of
herent contradictions of some imperialistic fact. their message but because each presents itself not
While the analytic concept of civil society must by as form but as essence, not as the only language in
all means be recovered from the heroic age of dem which the world makes sense but as the only real
ocratic revolutions, it should be de-idealized so sense of the world. Each of these worlds does
that “anti-civil society“ - the countervailing pro make sense, but only in an historically bounded
cesses of decivilization, polarization, and violence way. Recently, a new social world has come into
- can be seen also as typically “modern“ results. being. We must try to make sense of it. For the task
Finally, these new theories must be pushed to of intellectuals is not only to explain the world;
maintain a decentered, self-conscious reflexivity they must interpret it as well.
about their ideological dimensions even while they
continue in their efforts to create a new explanato
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© F. Enke Verlag Stuttgart Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Jg. 23, Heft 3, Juni 1994, S.

M odem, Anti, Post, and Neo:

1 Drafts of this essay were delivered at colloquia orga

In the juxtaposition between these formulations of

39 For example in his recent plea to fellow members of

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© F. Enke Verlag Stuttgart Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Jg. 23, Heft 3, Juni 1994, S.

M odem, Anti, Post, and Neo:

1 Drafts of this essay were delivered at colloquia orga­

In the juxtaposition between these formulations of

39 For example in his recent plea to fellow members of

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1 Drafts of this essay were delivered at colloquia orga