traditional customs vs modern and modernism

[zeribi]

help me in this topic traditional customs vs modern and modernism

[cmiraoui]

Tradition & Modernity

Don't confuse "modernity" or "modernization" with the literary-artistic-cultural period known as Modernism in the early to mid-20th century; e.g. Picasso, James Joyce, Stravinsky. (Our current period is either "late Modernism" or "postmodern.")

"Modernity" or "the modern era" is not a single period but a way of life. What is called "modern" is not just now or the recent past. Your parents or grandparents may not seem modern in the same way you are, but they were modern to their parents and grandparents.

Modernity definition (Oxford English Dictionary) 1b: An intellectual tendency or social perspective characterized by departure from or repudiation of traditional ideas, doctrines, and cultural values in favour of contemporary or radical values and beliefs (chiefly those of scientific rationalism and liberalism). ["liberalism" here doesn't mean liberal politics as much as free trade and free exchange of thoughts]

An identifying feature of modernity is constant change or loss of continuity from one generation to the next. In contrast, traditional cultures work to continue doing what their parents and grandparents did. For careers, for example, most modern people don't think of doing what their parents did—those jobs don't exist or have evolved to new descriptions. In a traditional culture, you would expect to grow up to do what your parents did. (At least in theory, traditional culture still holds in families, where position status and relationships may perpetuate themselves across generations.)

In history, the beginning of "modernity" is often associated with the Enlightenment (late 1600s-1700s), especially the Scientific Revolution and skepticism toward tradition. The Renaissance is often characterized as "early modernity" or "the early modern era," but modernity or modern thought may be traced back to the ancient Greeks (5th-3rd centuries BCE).

Modernization is associated with modernity: to modernize ("to adapt to modern needs or habits" OED) is to make more efficient, more practical, productive, or egalitarian.

Characteristics of modernity:

Mobility—whether geographic or socioeconomic—is also a feature of modernity; in a traditional culture, people know their place (geographical or social) and everyone else's place too. A modern society is a city or club or classroom of strangers who come and go with no past attachments.

human equality (in opportunity or possibility if not in fact)

secularization (never absolute or complete)

science over superstition

urbanization (farms > city)

rise of middle class

growth of freemarket capitalism as foremost driver of change:

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848): "The bourgeoisie [rising upper-middle-class] cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. "

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942): "creative destruction": innovations by entrepreneurs guarantee economic growth even while destroying value of previous investments in capital and skills. For instance, Midwest railroads in 19c USA stimulated mass production but destabilized earlier agricultural methods and lifeways. Today venture capitalists make companies more efficient by downsizing and destabilizing any established relations between employers and employees.

(recent examples: decline of newspapers, post offices, formerly pillars of local communities)

nationalism (i. e., identification of a person as "an American" rather than a member of a tribe, family, or state)

globalization (interconnectedness of local and global, with pockets of local resistance or isolation)

authority of tradition is replaced by authority of empirical science, observable human behavior, and personal choice



Modernity may also be understood in contrast to tradition

Tradition (OED) 4b: The action of transmitting or ‘handing down’, or fact of being handed down, from one to another, or from generation to generation; transmission of statements, beliefs, rules, customs, or the like, esp. by word of mouth or by practice without writing.

5b. A long established and generally accepted custom or method of procedure, having almost the force of a law; an immemorial usage; the body (or any one) of the experiences and usages of any branch or school of art or literature, handed down by predecessors and generally followed.



Modernity in dialogue with Tradition

"modern change" vs. "traditional values": ongoing revolution in values and material life that began in Ancient Greece and was reborn in Renaissance Europe and the Enlightenment.

Elders have power or prestige in traditional cultures; youths have power or prestige in modern cultures.

A typical family pattern of traditional cultures is the extended family (e.g., "It takes a village"); modern cultures develop the nuclear family, smaller (sub-atomic?) structures, and individualism.

Pace of change constantly accelerates, with occasional pauses (e. g., the 1950s)

lifespans lengthen, population increases in modernity; traditional cultures maintain by subsistence, with births and deaths canceling each other statistically.

in most material terms, modern life offers a better standard of living than the past (except for leisure, which disappears or is concentrated and calculated in modern and postmodern existence).

reactions against modernization may include fundamentalism, "family values," nostalgia for earlier times

Standard contrast with "modern" is "traditional"—modernity threatens tradition; it disrupts and unsettles older ways of life
Modernity and change are confusing, disorienting—desire for simplicity of past (which wasn't really simple, just familiar)
Reaction often leads to popularity of occult or supernatural + conspiracy during rapid change: people want to understand what's happening in familiar, personal terms of dramatic right and wrong rather than complex forces of history
in most material terms, modern life offers a better standard of living than the past did (except for leisure)

For most of human natural history, people lived short lives in interdependent communities of 50-100 people; in recent generations, people live increasingly as independent individuals in large cities of strangers.

(category of comparison, below)

traditional culture

modern culture

model for present behavior (Bakhtin)
past ("Our fathers did so . . . .")

future ("need to get ahead of the curve")

medium
oral / spoken

literate / written

time / space orientation
locally rooted

universal history

religion
polytheistic: local / tribal / animist

monotheistic "World Religions" (Judeo-Christianity, Islam, Buddhism)

setting
farm / village

city

economics
subsistence

growth

"Modernization" is relevant to study of the American Renaissance because

The American Renaissance is the period when Americans first began moving to cities in large numbers and experiencing the other changes listed above on a large scale.

Some literature of the period shows changes of intellect, lifestyle, and nature that resulted and how people adjusted. (Literature as engagement)

Much "Romantic" literature (such as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and The Last of the Mohicans or The Scarlet Letter) is set in an earlier or more rural time and place.