Modernity and Identity

While dominant conceptions of both modernism and postmodernism are centered around motions of statis and fixity, for most of the otherwise quite diverse writers in this book, modernity is a matter of movement, of flux, of change and of unpredictability.

Modernity and postmodernity are shown to mean, not the 'end of the subject' but the transformation and creation of new forms of subjectivity. Anthropological concepts are brought squarely into the heart of the modernity controversies, which are then recast in the context of tradition, globalization and of the crisis of identity in a newly de-centred world system.

The possibility of a third way is opened up, rejecting the opposition between the impersonal rationality of high modernism and the rationalist anti-ethics of postmodernism. The vision in this book is that of another modernity, which counter-poses Baudelaire to Rousseau, and loyalist ethics to abstract blueprints for social and political reorganization.

This book will be essential reading for students of sociology, cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, urban studies and philosophy.