and in contrast to what has gone before, modern society is typically orientated to the individual. In actuality, of course, society is a variegated structure comprising a diverse range of more or less formal institutions (e.g. family, school, peer group, neighbourhood, workplace, leisure network, state apparatus) through which humans live their lives by interacting with others. What is typical of modern society, though, is the weakening of the influence which these collective institutions have traditionally exerted over their individual members. Compared with pre-modern societies, and allowing for socio-economic variation, modernity furnishes its members with a degree of individual expression and personal choice which limits the traditional scope of collective determination. Whether expressed in the choice of partner, employment or life-style, modernity’s enabling of individuality lessens the role played by traditional collectivities (e.g. family, class, religion) along with their particular refractions of, for example, sex, race and age.
Modernity is not a fixed phenomenon and did not emerge over 200 years ago as a finished product with all of its features already in place. In addition to others mentioned throughout this book, each of the characteristics outlined above has taken time to acquire the features it has today and has gone through a number of different phases before doing so. For example, the typically dense urban-industrial landscape which has become such a feature of modern society has taken many years and experienced a number of distinct growth spurts to obtain its current profile. Combining inward migration (from home and abroad) with increased population growth (aided by improved living conditions), the transition from an overwhelmingly rural to a predominantly urban population is neither an instant nor even process. Although not necessarily progressing, modernity is certainly evolving and exists in a permanently transitional, if not fluid state (Urry, 2000).
Late modernity
In recent decades, the notion that modernity is now in a new phase of its existence has become increasingly prevalent. Using adjectives such as ‘late’, ‘hyper’, ‘high’ and ‘second’ to qualify their understanding of ‘modernity’, certain – mainly European – social theorists argue that modern society is now characterized by a fundamental radicalization of the processes and structures by which it has traditionally been defined (Bauman, 2005; Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990). Unlike postmodern theorists, however, those advocating the notion of late or second modernity argue that while contemporary society is different in degree from what has gone before, it is not different in kind. Contemporary society is not different in kind from what has gone before because the same kinds of social processes which gave rise to modernity (urban-industrialization, structural differentiation, social pluralization etc.) continue to exist. At the same time, however, and for a variety of reasons, these processes have assumed an intensity which magnifies both the scale and rapidity of their impact upon the structural fabric and social make-up of modern society.
An example often cited by those advocating a late- or second-modernity is the extent to which modern processes of societal integration have been radicalized over the course of the last few decades (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). On the one hand, this radicalization involves the intensification of late-modern integrative processes occurring at a national level. The most influential of such developments is perhaps the ‘marketization’ of contemporary society engendered by late-capitalist emphases upon economically driven modes of existence. Encompassing far more than financial transactions and commercial activities, the marketization of late modern society impacts upon all walks of life. Through their valorization of competition and inculcation of acquisitive and consumerist lifestyles, the marketizing forces of late modernity engender the progressive commodification of contemporary society as a whole. On the other hand, the radicalization of integrative processes occurs at an unprecedented international level. While the rise of modern society was in many ways predicated on the growth of international exchange – not least in respect of trade and workforce migration – the recent intensification of transnational integration is such that a new term (‘globalization’) has been adopted to signal the hyper-modern step change in integrative dynamics. The technological advances of the late-modern period (e.g. passenger aircraft, satellite technology, the internet) enable the rapid and large-scale circulation of material goods, people, information, tastes, values and beliefs. Exemplified by the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent global slump, such is the nature of this worldwide circulation that domestic structures and social dynamics are now inextricably interwoven within a highly integrated network of international processes and flows.
Society
The concept of society is the beating heart of sociological analysis. The word society (from the Latin societas) was around long before it was co-opted by early social theorists such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857) and used to designate ‘sociology’ as the ‘science of society’ (Seidman, 2004, pp. 11–21). When used sociologically, though, society denotes the totality of the social world whose individual inhabitants occupy any number of collective institutions (family, class, interest-group, religion), whose interactions are structured relative to a range of overarching processes of both a material (economic, political, legal) and symbolic (common knowledge, tradition, morality) kind. Ultimately, what distinguishes one type of society (such as modern/urban-industrial) from another (such as medieval/feudal) is:
they have different kinds of institutions;
these institutions interact in different ways; and
this interaction is orchestrated by different forms of material and symbolic structure.
In respect of different kinds of institutions, the modern family unit, for example, has very different characteristics from feudal kinship structures. Whereas medieval families tended to be extended, tightly knit, categorically heterosexual, and functioning economic units, the modern family is typically nuclear, diffuse, more varied in gender and number, and characterized as principally domestic in character. At the same time, because the economic, legal and political structures of feudal society reflected an aristocratic, religious, agricultural, and strictly hierarchical worldview, the medieval family’s interaction with other social institutions was of a very different kind from that of the modern family.
Key dimensions of society
As indicated above, modern society is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon whose constitutive parts (themselves varied and complex) interact in a vertiginous number ways. By way of facilitating sociological analysis of society, its components and their interaction, sociologists often distinguish between what are commonly termed the ‘macro’, ‘meso’ and ‘micro’ dimensions of the social world. Reflecting their derivation from the Greek language, macro literally means ‘long’ or ‘large’ and refers to the large-scale, overarching structures of society; meso means ‘middle’ and denotes society’s mid-range, intermediate parts; and micro means ‘small’ and refers to the, usually face-to-face, interactions between individuals which form the bedrock on which society rests. In their most apparent form, macro-structures take shape as economic (e.g. financial exchange), political (e.g. the state) and juridical (e.g. laws) processes which orchestrate the interaction of social institutions and the individuals who populate them. At the same time, though, macro-structures also exist as value systems (e.g. morality), dominant beliefs (e.g. religion), normative tastes (e.g. humour), and prevailing expectations (gender) which pervade the social world. In so doing, these symbolic structures influence both how individuals act (e.g. dieting, consumption, sexism, racism) and how institutions operate by way of, for example, access and exclusion (e.g. marriage) and reward and sanction (e.g. discrimination).
The intermediate dimension of society is occupied by a wide variety of institutions which, like aforementioned macro-structures, are more or less apparent to the untrained eye. In contemporary urban-industrial society, perhaps the most obvious institutions are those of education (e.g. school and university), employment (e.g. factory and supermarket), finance (e.g. banks and credit
