Living in Modernity
Chapter 2 Summary

This chapter looks to develop an understanding of the concept of modernity, referred to in Chapter 1. The chapter deliberately avoids direct engagement with theoretical discussions about modernity. Instead it highlights the distinctiveness and complexity of life in modern societies through the use of substantive examples.

The chapter emphasises the following features of modernity:

• The importance and novelty of the social transformation that marks the onset of modernity.
• The ways in which structural changes, often of global proportion, have altered and continue to alter our everyday lives.
• The fact that although there are common features of life in modern societies, modernity generates very diverse local experiences.

The chapter considers the impact of four key processes of modernity:
The development of industrial capitalism and the way in which it reconstituted people as workers and consumers.

• The influence of rational forms of thought and science.
• The rise of the nation-state as an apparatus of power and as an 'imagined community'.
• The changes in experiences of 'private' and 'public' worlds in the conduct of social relationships and in self-identity.

The chapter concludes by introducing the idea that we may be moving into a new stage of social development called postmodernity in which the old certainties of the modern period are disappearing.