Modernity refers to a phase in a devopmental process of a country or society, which is marked by: industrial type of production, capitalist economy, democratic political system, new types of social differentiation (increasing division of labour and class based social structure), bureucracitic organization of the state and institutions, rising influence of science and rationalization, increased geographic and social mobility, urbanization, and reorganization and acceleration of daily life. Modern society stands in stark contrast to traditional agrarian societies, which were often organized around religion and family. Some authors argue that the most economically developed countries transitioned from modern to postmodern societies in the latter half of the twentieth century (see entry Postindustrial Society).

                    Theoretical Approaches to Modernity

Max Weber posits that legal-rational authority is historically a product of Western culture and the modern age. It is characterized by the application of impersonal laws through official state bodies. The administrative apparatus is hierarchically and bureaucratically organized. All persons are subject to the same laws, including those performing the most important functions. In addition, there is a separation of official duty from the private life of those in administrative positions, as well as the separation of public property from personal property. Apart from the level of the modern state, the rational authority also appears in several different types of organizations and institutions.

In his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), Jürgen Habermas argues that in modern society, the lifeworld achieves that ideal speech situation, which leads to greater differentiation between different elements of the lifeworld, that is, between society, culture, and personality. In the modern age, the system is beginning to exercise increasing control over the lifeworld, and this process Habermas called "colonization of lifeworld". Although both the system and the lifeworld go through their own processes of rationalization (each of which has a separate and different internal logic), in the end, the system becomes the one that exercises increasing domination over the lifeworld. Habermas views modernity as an unfinished project, and for that project to be realized, the system and the lifeworld must be reconnected into one harmonious dialectical relationship, where each sphere will mutually strengthen the other. New social movements are the best example and engine that will enable the realization of the potential that modernity has.

Anthony Giddens developed his approach to modernity in The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), and The Transformation of Intimacy (1992). He believes that at the end of the seventeenth century, there was a sharp discontinuity with the traditional social order. There are three sources of dynamic change associated with the emergence of modern society. In the modern age, there is a temporal and spatial separation of social life, because interpersonal interactions cease to be limited only by the physical closeness of individuals, and social relations begin to act at a distance. The two main mechanisms that act remotely are "symbolic tokens" and "expert systems". Symbolic tokens, such as media and money, can be exchanged regardless of who uses them. Expert systems are made up of people who have technical or professional knowledge. Both of these mechanisms require trust to operate effectively and provide ontological certainty. Modernity is also characterized by the development of the "wholesale reflexivity" of individuals and institutions. Modernity also includes the transformation of lifestyles and intimacy into "pure relationships", because trust and closeness come from the actors themselves, and not from the wider environment as was the case in a traditional society.

Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim believes that modernity has led to increased individualization and greater freedom of individual choice, which has had a major impact on changes in family life. Protestant ethics, increased social and geographical mobility, increased levels of education, improved working class economic conditions, and urbanization and secularization processes have contributed to increasing individualization and freedom of choice. Individuals today are far less limited by traditional rules in choosing their family roles, but, on the other hand, there has been a weakening of the support and security provided by the traditional community. The nuclear family has thus become a place of security and protection from the impersonal and dangerous outside world. The love relationships of the spouses in the nuclear family, which express and fulfill the individuality of both parties, create a new form of security. Individuality and the search for love have created many non-traditional forms of marriage, relationships, and families. Difficulties in career development under capitalism and the disappearance of traditional gender roles (both at work and in the household) are the source of the biggest family conflicts. The traditional family will not disappear, but family life is becoming more complex, so different forms of interpersonal association are emerging, sexual life is being separated from biological reproduction, women are in a better position, and same-sex relationships are growing and becoming more socially accepted. 

In Contradictions of the Welfare State (1984), Claus Offe studied what he calls the "crisis of crisis management" in social security systems in capitalist countries. He believes that the modern state is no longer able to solve the socio-economic problems and conflicts of late capitalism. In his book Disorganized Capitalism (1985), Offe views modern Western democracies as disorganized systems full of problems: divisions in the labor force, declining role and strength of trade unions, and weakening liberal-democratic and neo-corporative governance mechanisms.

Jean Baudrillard, in his works The System of Objects (1968) and The Consumer Society (1970), argues that modern society is increasingly structured around signs and symbols. All objects can be analyzed in the context of binary oppositions that reveal the rules and internal relationships that structure objects. Marxism overlooked that goods are a sign that gives individuals a cultural identity. The sign constitutes a special material reality that is used for prestige, status, and thus for social differentiation. In his later works Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and Fatal Strategies (1983), Baudrillard describes the social world as dominated by the media and the explosion of the image. In modernity, copies or models represented real objects or events, while in the postmodern era, that is, in the era of "simulacrum", copy or simulacrum produces reality, objects, and events. 

Zygmunt Baumann studies Nazi crimes in his book Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). He believes that sociologists have not dealt enough with the Holocaust and that they have generally viewed it as the only exception in civilized modern society. Bauman, on the other hand, believes that it is precisely the specific characteristics of modern society, in general, that have made the Holocaust possible. Modern technology and bureaucracy have enabled the Holocaust to be carried out quickly and efficiently, and, on the other hand, technology and bureaucracy have enabled individuals to renounce their own moral responsibility for crimes. The racist ideology and the centralized German state, which destroyed civil society and trade unions, freed up space for unfettered genocide.

Ulrich Beck developed his approach to modernization in the book Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (1994) and in the article "Reflective Modernization Theory: Problems, Hypotheses, and Research Plan" (2003). He named this approach "Reflexive Modernization." Reflexive modernization contains three complexes: 1) the risk society theorem; 2) the theorem of forced individualization; and 3) the theorem of multidimensional globalization (cosmopolitanization). Reflective modernity theory encompasses all three theoretical complexes - risk society, individualization, and cosmopolitanization - as interconnected and mutually reinforcing processes that create radicalized forms of modernization dynamics, and that replace the logic of development in early modernity. The logic of unambiguity, from the first modernity, is replaced by the logic of ambiguity, nonlinearity, and uncertainty, in the age of reflective modernity. The transformation of early modernity into reflective modernity (Beck also calls it a “target of change”) is the product of a radical application of key principles of industrial society, but more as a critical mass of unintended and unexpected consequences of those principles than as an expected and planned consequence of industrialization and the logic of early modernity. Changes are taking place in many fields: the nature of capitalism is changing, new forms of work are emerging (labor flexibility), a new global order, a new nature of the state (declining power of the nation-state and welfare state), a new society, the declining importance of traditional institutions; as well as the transformation of gender roles (alternative sexual and gender identities, the disintegration of the gender division of labor), new forms of family life, new forms of individualization and everyday life. Institutional individualization requires making individual decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions, where traditions and habits were previously dominant. Instead of a single identity, reflective modernization promotes the multiplicity of identities. On a broader level, there is a loss of differences between nature and culture, knowledge and superstition, between experts and lay people.

Niklas Luhmann states that modern societies are characterized by the accelerated differentiation of the social system into an increasing number of subsystems. Each new subsystem has an environment that is the same for all other subsystems, but also an environment that is specific only to that subsystem. The whole social system, or some part of it, such as a large organization, adapts to the environment by differentiating within the system itself. This differentiation makes it possible to accelerate the evolution of the system. In modern societies, functional differentiation is paramount. Each part of the system has its own separate function. For the whole system to function, each part of the system must successfully perform its own function. The independence of each part of the system from other parts of the system is greatest when each part successfully performs its function, because if one part does not successfully perform its function, there are negative effects on other parts of the system. Increasing the functional complexity of the system leads to greater vulnerability because the functional failure of one part can harm the entire system. On the other hand, increasing functional complexity leads to a greater ability to recombine parts of the system to respond to environmental challenges. The functional differentiation of modern societies requires that problem solving has to descend from the level of the entire social system, down to the level of individual social subsystems. If a social system does not have a subsystem that is in charge of solving a specific problem, then the whole system is in danger. Luhmann believes that the environmental problems faced by modern societies are a consequence of the lack of a subsystem that would be in charge of solving those problems.

Jean-François Lyotard, in the book The Postmodern Condition (1979), argues that in pre-modern societies, the narrative was, above all, preserved with the help of those who told stories, where tradition and customs strengthened the sense of social unity. In modern times, science, which has received legitimacy from the state and other institutions, has led to the creation of metanarratives that have replaced storytelling, customs, and traditions. This development represents the realization of the ideals of the Enlightenment, that is, faith in human reason and progress that will enable the emergence of objective and positive science.

Talcott Parsons argues that the transition to modern industrial society brought four more types of universals: 1) bureaucratic organization, 2) legal system of generalized universalic norms applicable to the whole society, 3) money and markets based on property and contract, 4) democratic association - universal suffrage, parliamentary assemblies, secret ballot, free elections, political associations and the concept of citizenship. With the evolution of society, cultural and social subsystems become more autonomous and independent of state control.

Michel Foucault posits that modernity produces societies based on discipline, oversight, and normalization of practice through discourse. Discourse is spread and controlled by institutions and their specialists, teachers, judges, and psychiatrists. Discourse is analyzed as historical and specific to a particular social group and its practice. In addition, Foucault seeks to discover how these discursive formations, over time, come to be seen as natural and common sense.

In the book, A Theory of Modernity (1999), Agnes Heller presents a critical theory of modernity. She believes that in the age of modernity, the central value is freedom. Modernity is characterized by social and individual freedom to question all previously existing norms, rules, and beliefs through the value categories of good and bad. On the other hand, what gives modernity its continuity and resistance to change is technology and the relations of dominance that arise from differences in wealth and political power. It is this double bind of modernity - that, on the one hand, all values ​​and relations are called into question, and on the other hand, stability and resistance to change are the key features that set modernity apart from earlier periods.

                                            Modernization

Modernization is a transitional process in which a society goes from pre-modern and enters into a modern phase of development. Depending on the historical period and geographical location, modernization can be divided into three different models. The first model of modernization relates to North America and Western Europe, which modernized in 18 and 19th centuries; the second model of transformation refers to countries that started with the process of modernization in the 20th century and the capitalist setting, while the third model of modernization refers to countries that modernized in the 20th century under a socialist economy. 

Modernization theory has its roots in Max Weber's theory of rationalization, especially in areas of capitalist economy and bureaucracy. In The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber sees capitalism as specifically marked by the inherent capitalist spirit, the main feature of which is the opposition to traditional economic action. The capitalist spirit contains a positive view of work and the acquisition of material wealth. Emphasis is placed on effort, thrift, discipline, and innovation, while laziness, gaining wealth without work, and hedonistic spending is viewed negatively. In pre-capitalist economies, people worked only as much as they needed to achieve a standard of living that was satisfactory to them. The capitalist spirit led to the complete rationalization of economic life.

Weber sees the development of bureaucracy as most closely related to the development of a legal-rational type of authority. Within a bureaucratic organization, individuals are connected hierarchically, each position has specific powers and duties, and there are clear relationships of superiority and subordination. There are general formalized rules that all members must strictly follow. The duties and salary of each person are precisely defined, the prospects for progress within the organization are known, and job qualifications are acquired through schooling or special exams. Bureaucracy is guided by instrumental rationality, and its advantages are: predictability, speed, resource savings, and uniformity.

American sociologist Talcott Parsons, following Weber, states that with the transition to a modern industrial society, four more types of universals are formed: 1) bureaucratic organization, 2) legal system of generalized universalic norms applicable to the whole society, 3) money and markets based on property and contract, 4) democratic association - universal suffrage, parliamentary assemblies, secret ballot, free elections, political associations and the concept of citizenship. With the evolution of society, cultural and social subsystems become more autonomous and independent of state control.

                                  Economic Modernization

One of the most important proponents of modernization theory was American economist and political scientist Walt Rostow. In his research, throughout his life, he focused on the question of the causes of the economic development of different countries. To answer this question, he developed a theory of modernization based on the concept of the "stages of economic growth", and it is presented in the book Stages of Economic Growth: A Non Communist Manifesto (1960). In the „traditional stage“, or the first stage of growth, where poor countries are, economic institutions, technology, and cultural values ​​do not provide fertile ground for economic development. In underdeveloped countries, traditional culture, social institutions, weak work ethic, and lack of entrepreneurial spirit impede economic efficiency. In addition, large families, with many dependent members, make it difficult to save for investments. Fatalistic values, which emphasize that suffering is a normal part of life and promote acceptance of one's own bad destiny, are another major obstacle to economic development. The government in underdeveloped countries makes it even more difficult to abandon traditional values ​​by controlling wages and prices.

In the second stage, which Rostow calls „the preconditions for take-off“ the process of development begins when the elite start initiating innovations in economic activities. Well-educated elite steers the country toward investments in new technology and infrastructure, such as transportation and water supplies. All of this helps build up conditions that would enable countries to take-off. In the third or "take-off stage", poor countries begin to reject traditional values ​​and institutions, and people begin to save and invest for future gains. Growth is generated from a small number of economic sectors, such as textiles or manufacturing. These few take-off industries become drivers of growth, while other sectors lag behind and remain dominated by traditional practices. Developed countries should help this process of economic growth of poor countries by financing strategic areas: birth control programs, infrastructure projects (electrification, transport), and the development of new industrial sectors.

In the fourth stage, which the author calls "the drive for maturity", there is a stable development of new technologies and successful adoption of social institutions of rich countries. In the fifth stage, which is called "the age of high mass consumption", ordinary people, as they have increased their standard of living, begin to spend money on a wide range of goods and services, and the state itself joins rich countries.

In his book, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (1959), American sociologist Neil Smelser expands the functionalist model by introducing, to this predominantly static paradigm, an analysis of social change that he studied in the context of industrialization and modernization. He sees the industrial revolution as a multidimensional social process involving political, economic, family, cultural, and scientific change. Smelser shows how the modernization of production technology was related to changes in all other areas. He pays special attention to the question of how the factory system in Britain has influenced the change in the family structure and studies the gender division of labor as an independent variable that has affected both the economy and the family.

                                   Political Modernization

American political scientist and sociologist David Apter focused on social change and modernization, primarily in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. For Apter, modernization is a special case of social development. He explores which aspects of tradition in a country can slow or accelerate the modernization of society. Unlike other modernization theorists, he does not view this process as straightforward and uniform but believes that it is necessary to adapt the modernization process to the local context. In this context, he explores alternative ways of modernization in different countries. However, no matter what the context, successful modernization always requires a social system capable of innovation, as well as a highly differentiated social structure.

Israeli sociologist Noah Eisenstadt also studied the process of modernization. Modernization in Europe is a unique case that was the product of symbolic and institutional characteristics specific to that civilization. As modernization spread around the world, "multiple modernities" developed, and the best example of a different modernization is Japan in the 19th century.

                               Cultural Modernization

American political scientist and sociologist Ronald Inglehart is best known for studying the development of postmodern values ​​in the United States and around the world. He believes that post-material values ​​that emphasize aesthetic, intellectual, and self-actualizing needs replaced modernist values ​​that are focused on the material, that is, economic needs. This change occurs because the generations that grew up after the Second World War grew up in conditions of relatively high economic security, while the previous generations were more exposed to wars and poverty. This "silent revolution" (the concept first introduced in his book Silent Revolution, 1977), which took place in the 1960s and 1970s, led to cultural and political differences between the generations.

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