Alternative and Multiple Modernities: Modernity Reconsidered

This article sheds light on some aspects of the actual debate concerning modernity. A debate that attempts to depict a critical review and reading of the theoretical framework within which the Western understanding of modernity was established as ''Unique'',''Western'', and ''Universal''.The core of this debate is the two notions of multiple and alternative modernities which both assume that the best way to understand the contemporary world is for modernity to be seen as a story of continual formation, constitution, reconstitution , and development of multiple, changing and often contested and conflicting modernities. Furthermore, the article aims at laying the groundwork for thinking about the Arab modernity or even modernities and their possibility in a contemporary globalized world. 

Download Article Download Issue Subscribe for a year

Abstract

Zoom

This article sheds light on some aspects of the actual debate concerning modernity. A debate that attempts to depict a critical review and reading of the theoretical framework within which the Western understanding of modernity was established as ''Unique'',''Western'', and ''Universal''.The core of this debate is the two notions of multiple and alternative modernities which both assume that the best way to understand the contemporary world is for modernity to be seen as a story of continual formation, constitution, reconstitution , and development of multiple, changing and often contested and conflicting modernities. Furthermore, the article aims at laying the groundwork for thinking about the Arab modernity or even modernities and their possibility in a contemporary globalized world. 

References