Subsections
[Cr:4, Lc:3, Tt:1, Lb:0]
This course is aimed at answering the question: What is modernity? What
makes a society modern? How does the Indian experience of modernity
differ from societies in Europe and North America and from its neighbors
in Asia?
This course will start with the assumption that the transition from
traditional to modern societies results from the interaction of a number
of deeply structural processes of change taking place over a long period
of time. These processes include the political, the economic, the social
and the cultural. While the political (the rise of the nation state)
and the economic (the rise of industrial capitalism) will not be
ignored, the emphasis will be on the social and cultural/intellectual
factors in the emergence of modernity.
We will focus on the following cultural and intellectual movements that
have shaped the modern consciousness:
- The Scientific Revolution: We will focus on the dis-enchantment of
nature, and the growing respect for experimental and inductive reasoning
brought about by the Scientific Revolution through 1500-1700 CE.
- The Enlightenment: We will read key texts of the Enlightenment, the
18th century intellectual movement that challenged the traditional
sources of social authority in the name of reason, individual
liberties and progress.
- Secularization: The emergence of secular nation-states and social
orders that sought their legitimacy from the popular will, rather than
divine will.
How these intellectual-social currents, which gathered force first in
Europe, Britain and North America gradually became globalized will be
our second main focus of interest. Here we will look at:
- Women's Rights and Modernity: The often contradictory relationship
between the rhetoric of freedom and equality and the continued
exclusion of women from the public sphere through the Enlightenment will
be examined.
- Colonial modernity: How colonialism both enabled and distorted the
growth of science and secularism in colonial societies, with India as an
example.
- Multiple Modernities: Different cultural routes to modernity in the
globalizing world will be examined.
- Anderson, Marshall, All that is Solid melts into Air: Experience of
Modernity Penguin, USA, 1988
- Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol I and II
Basic Books, 1973.
- Hall, Stuart (ed.), Formations of Modernity Polity Press, 1992
- Jacob. Margaret, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution
Knopf, 1988.
- Nanda, Meera, Breaking the Spell of Dharma: A Case of Indian
Enlightenment Three Essays Collective, 2002.
- Pathak, Abhijit, Indian Modernity: Contradictions, Paradoxes and
Possibilities Gyan, 2008.
- Singer, Milton, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological
Approach to Indian Civilization Midway Reprints, 1980.
