(Source: Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. P-283) Modernism.

A term referring to a movement within the arts in Western societies between about 1880 and 1950, represented by figures such as Picasso in painting, Eliot in poetry, Joyce in literature, Stravinsky in music and the Bauhaus in architecture. It above all emphasized novelty, although by the middle of the twentieth century it had almost become the orthodoxy. Some argue that it has been superseded by postmodernism (q.v.). Modernity. A term describing the particular attributes of modern societies. A good deal of sociological work is based on the assumption of a sharp divide between pre-modern and modern societies. There is considerable debate as to the qualities of the two kinds of society as well as to when Western societies became modem. Modernity is distinguished on economic, political, social and cultural grounds. For example, modern societies typically have industrial, capitalist (q.v.) economies, democratic political organization and a social structure founded on a division into social classes. There is less agreement on cultural features, which are said to include a tendency to the fragmentation of experience, a commodification (q.v.) and rationalization (q.v.) of all aspects of life, and a speeding up of the pace of daily life. There is disagreement about the periodization (q.v.) of modernity, some writers associating it with the appearance and spread of capitalism from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, some with the religious changes of the fifteenth century onwards which provided the basis for rationalization, others with the onset of industrialization in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still others with cultural transformations at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century which coincide with modernism (q.v.). Recently it has been argued that contemporary societies are no longer modem but postmodern. Modernization. Modernization theory was a dominant analytical paradigm in American sociology for the explanation of the global process by which traditional societies achieved modernity, (i) Political modernization involves the development of key institutions political parties, parliaments, franchise and secret ballots - which support participatory decisionmaking. (2) Cultural modernization typically produces secularization (q.v.) and adherence to nationalist ideologies. (3) Economic modernization, while distinct from industrialization, is associated with profound economic changes - an increasing division of labour, use of management techniques, improved technology and the growth of commercial facilities. (4) Social modernization involves increasing literacy, urbanization and the decline of traditional authority. These changes are seen in terms of increasing social and structural differentiation

(q.v.). Modernization theory has been criticized on two grounds: (i) modernization is based on development in the West and is thus an ethnocentric model of development; (2) modernization does not necessarily lead to industrial growth and equal distribution of social benefits, since it is an essentially uneven process resulting in underdevelopment and dependency (q.v.). Marxist alternatives to modernization theory stress the negative aspects of modernity on traditional societies.

Formation of Modernity-A Summary