Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Book Award in 2012, Chandra Mukerji offers with this remarkable new book an explanation of the birth and subsequent proliferation of the many strands in the braid of modernity. The journey she takes us on is dedicated to teasing those strands apart, using forms of cultural analysis from the social sciences to approach history with fresh eyes. Faced with the problem of trying to understand what is hardest to see: the familiar, she gains analytic distance and clarity by juxtaposing cultural analysis with history, asking how modernity began and how people conjured into existence the world we now recognize as modern.
Part I describes the genesis of key modern social forms: the modern self, communities of strangers, the modern state, and the industrial world economy. Part II focuses on modern social types: races, genders, and childhood. Part III focuses on some of the cultural artifacts and activities of the con
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I
Chapter One: MODERN SELVES and FASHION
Chapter Two: COMMUNITIES OF STRANGERS and MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE
Chapter Three: CULTURAL IMAGINARIES and MODERN STATES
Chapter Four: LIBERAL and INDUSTRIAL MODERNITY
Part II
Chapter Five: RACE and GEOPOLITICS
Chapter Six: GENDER and POLITICAL ECONOMY
Chapter Seven: THE MODERN CHILD
Part III
Chapter Eight: DIGITAL GAMES and PATHS through MODERN LIFE
Chapter Nine: PHILOSOPHICAL MACHINERY and FILM
Chapter Ten: ESCAPE ROUTES
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
