In the long nineteenth century, dominant stereotypes presented people of the Mediterranean South as particularly passionate and unruly, therefore incapable of adapting to the moral and political duties imposed by European civilization and modernity. This book studies, for the first time in comparative perspective, the gender dimension of a process that legitimised internal hierarchies between North and South in the continent. It also analyses how this phenomenon was responded to from Spain and Italy, pointing to the similarities and differences between both countries. Drawing on travel narratives, satires, philosophical works, novels, plays, operas, and paintings, it shows how this transnational process affected, in changing historical contexts, the ways in which nation, gender, and modernity were imagined and mutually articulated.

This Book Begins With An Exploration Of The Origins Of Modernity In European Science And Religion And Proceeds To A Discussion Of The End Of Modernity.

For over a century, Europe has been characterised by a plurality of capitalist modernities. At any moment, each country possesses its own distinctly modern qualities which are partly shaped through interrelationships with other countries. Each European commodity society has experienced successive, but different overlapping, periods of industrial modernity (large scale factories and urban growth), high modernity (social modernization promoted by social engineering) and hypermodernity (the acceleration of modernity, yielding new circumstances and sensibilities). Interrogating contemporary hypermodern Europe thus requires an exploration of industrial and high modern Europe. Recognising European Modernities explores a century of civilisation through a critical examination of the extreme case of Sweden. Using montage - relayering multiple pasts and on-going present - the book challenges the contemporary obsession with postmodernity, demanding a deeper, more connective understanding of the pleasures and dangers of the European present. The author visits three spectacular spaces: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Globe, a contemporary multi-purpose arena. Analysis of these pivotal spaces reveals the on-going process of modernization as new forms of consumption are repeatedly entangled in changing discourses of power to be reworked and translated into cultural politics.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Keith Tester examines modernity through the prism of the two sovereigns - of the individual and the collectivity. It is a stimulating meditation on the difficult and contradictory experiences of European modernity.

Most theories of modernity are based, explicitly or implicitly, on the development of Western societies since the late medieval period, but these theories are of limited value for understanding the development of societies in Asia and other parts of the world, where the process of modernization took place under different circumstances and often in a rapid and highly compressed fashion – not over centuries but in decades. Asian societies have been propelled into modernity too, but theirs is a compressed modernity, which displays very different traits. In this important book, Chang Kyung-Sup provides a systematic account of this compressed modernity and uses it to analyse the extreme social changes, complexities and imbalances found in South Korea and other East Asian societies. While these changes enabled South Korea to modernize very quickly and achieve high levels of economic growth, they also created a society that is haunted by various developmental and civilizational costs, such as endemic generational conflicts, overloaded family responsibilities and exceptionally high suicide rates. As with other societies that have experienced compressed modernity, the South Korean “miracle” is replete with extreme and contradictory social traits. This pioneering work of the nature and consequences of compressed modernity will be of great interest to students and scholars of sociology, politics and development studies, as well as anyone interested in South Korea, Asia and postcolonial societies.

South Africa's unique history has produced literatures in many languages, in both oral and written forms, reflecting the diversity in the cultural histories and experiences of its people. The Cambridge History offers a comprehensive, multi-authored history of South African literature in all eleven official languages (and more minor ones) of the country, produced by a team of over forty international experts, including contributors from all of the major regions and language groups of South Africa. It will provide a complete portrait of South Africa's literary production, organised as a chronological history from the oral traditions existing before colonial settlement, to the post-apartheid revision of the past. In a field marked by controversy, this volume is more fully representative than any existing account of South Africa's literary history. It will make a unique contribution to Commonwealth, international and postcolonial studies and serve as a definitive reference work for decades to come.

This book explores the influence of right-wing political cultures (including conservatism, political Catholicism, reactionary nationalism and fascism) on nation-building processes and the creation of national identities in modern times. The chapters extend the focus of analysis across the different cultures and movements of the Right, their broad geographical spread, as well as cultural factors. Adopting a transnational perspective, this volume highlights the significance of a series of processes – such as the growth of nationalist imaginaries and political cultures – that extended beyond national boundaries and were often articulated via cross-border dynamics. Special attention is paid to the political cultures and transnational networks of the Right in Europe and Latin America. Case studies including countries such as Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina provide the reader with a broad overview of the circulation of right-wing and conservative thinking. Through an innovative approach, this volume offers scholars, students and the interested reader a valuable historical perspective to understand the development and expansion of right-wing nationalist and authoritarian positions.

This volume presents and illustrates the development of the ideologies of nation states, the "modern" successors of former empires. They exemplify the use modernist ideological framaeworks, from liberalism to socialism, in the context of the fundamental reconfiguration of the political system in this part of Europe between the 1860s and the 1930s. It also gives a panorama of the various solutions proposed for the national question in the region.