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Modernities A Geohistorical Interpretation Peter J. Taylor |
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$67.50 Cloth |
Examines the concept of “modernity” and reveals how it is expressed in culture. A thoroughly readable, far-reaching analysis of "modernity" and "the modern," this book focuses on the specific periods and places where ideas and practices of being modern are created and challenged. Peter J. Taylor contends that modernity is a multiple phenomenon: that is, different modern times and different modern spaces exist in a world of multiple modernities. He argues that three "prime modernities" have been defined by the development of the modern world—from mercantile modernity to British-led industrial modernity to today's American-led consumer modernity—and illustrates the cultural expression of these modernities as "acts of the ordinary," such as paintings, the home, and the suburbs. In a masterly analysis of politics and the state in terms of the modern, Taylor shows how each political organization of a particular modernity creates an appropriate political reaction—for instance, the socialism prompted by British modernity and the environmentalism called forth by American modernity. In noting the tendency of states to create spaces and eschew places, he draws an intriguing parallel between nation states and home-households. Taylor describes the project of Americanization as a new form of modernity and also suggests an end to American hegemony. "An excellently written and tantalizing little volume This book has special usefulness as a geographic approach to world economics, politics, and history while simultaneously grounding our understanding of where we fit as individuals in the 'big picture.'" —The Professional Geographer Peter J. Taylor is professor in the Department of Geography at Loughborough University, England. 170 pages | 6 x 9 | 1999 |
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$22.50 Paper