Reflexive Moderniza/on as the Two-sided Ra/onaliza/on of Modern Socie/es and Cultures


Harley D. Dickinson, University of Saskatchewan

Are Western socie/es and cultures modern or post-modern? In 1959, C. Wright Mills announced that the most advanced Western socie/es had entered a new post-modern epoch. As a result, he called for a new post-modern sociology - one that rejected Grand theory and what he termed the abstracted empiricism of statistical techniques. Many rushed to assume the post-modernist mantle of Mills the Prophet (Friedrichs, 1970). Others rejected Mills’ epochal proclamation. Habermas (1984; 1985), for example, argued that post-modernism was an anti-modern ideology, and that Western moderniza/on remained an incomplete but on-going socio-cultural project. Others also agreed that Western societies and cultures remained modern, but had entered a neo-modern phase (Tiryakian, 1991). Although many sociological theorists agreed with this proposition, there is no agreement on how to define neo-modernism, or what to call it. In this paper I propose a synthesis of the theories of Habermas argument that moderniza/on is a two-sided rationalization process and Beck’s theory of Reflexive, or Second, Modernization as the modernization of already (partially?) modernized systems institutions. Specifically, using Habermas’ three-dimensional concept of rationality I argue that Reflexive Sociology is reflecting about foundational ontological, epistemological, axiological, and praxiological assump/ons that shape both the discipline and modernizing societies and cultures in general

This paper will be presented at the following session: