ONE USEFUL WAY of thinking about modernity is to think of it as the historical period of validity of a certain tripartite division of society—State, Market, and Civil Society—the domains of politics, economics, and sociology. This tripartite division was originally understood to apply only to the West. Non-Western high civilizations (Islam, Far East, India) had to be studied in their totality; this was the domain of Orientalism. Regions of the non-West lacking in high culture—lacking especially in cannons of great antiquity—were also to be studied in their totality; the domain of anthropology. This denial of modernity to the non-West could be sustained rather effortlessly through the nineteenth century, but become increasingly problematic in the twentieth century until it was throughly discredited by the postmodernist revolt from the sixties onwards. Nevertheless, the disciplinary division survived surprisingly unscathed.
State, Market, and Civil Society
State, Market, and Civil Society
State, Market, and Civil Society
ONE USEFUL WAY of thinking about modernity is to think of it as the historical period of validity of a certain tripartite division of society—State, Market, and Civil Society—the domains of politics, economics, and sociology. This tripartite division was originally understood to apply only to the West. Non-Western high civilizations (Islam, Far East, India) had to be studied in their totality; this was the domain of Orientalism. Regions of the non-West lacking in high culture—lacking especially in cannons of great antiquity—were also to be studied in their totality; the domain of anthropology. This denial of modernity to the non-West could be sustained rather effortlessly through the nineteenth century, but become increasingly problematic in the twentieth century until it was throughly discredited by the postmodernist revolt from the sixties onwards. Nevertheless, the disciplinary division survived surprisingly unscathed.