Tracing Modernity PDF Download

Author: Mari Hvattum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134406398
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author: Mari Hvattum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113440638X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
First published in 2004. Walter Benjamin famously defined modernity as “the world dominated by its phantasmagorias”. The chapters in this book focus on one such phantasmagoria, namely that of ‘modernity’ itself. From the late seventeenth century until today, the ‘modern’ has served as a key category by which to understand an ever-changing present. Art and architecture have played a key role in this pursuit as the means by which the modern was to manifest itself. The aim of this anthology is to trace the modern project through its multifarious manifestations, in order to understand contemporary culture in a deeper sense than facile discussions of modernism and post-modernism often grant. Drawing on architectural and urban history as well as philosophy and sociology, the chapters outline the complex and conflicting roots of modernity by tracing its manifestations in architecture and the city. The book is divided into three parts, each exploring a distinct aspect of modernity. While part one scrutinizes the much-abused concepts of ‘modernity’ , ‘modernism’ and ‘the modern’ , parts two and three look at the manifestations of the modern in architecture and the city respectively. Focusing particularly on the transition between historicism and modernism, the chapters offer a re-interpretation of early modern architectural and urban culture as it came to expression in people such as Cerda, Semper, Bötticher, Scott, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Benjamin, Warburg, Kracauer, Mackintosh, Behrens, Taut, and Le Corbusier. For all their differences, these were thinkers and practitioners whose undisputed modernity arose from a deep preoccupation with history. A re-reading of their legacy may throw light on the neglected reciprocity between modernity and its historical conditions of becoming.

Author: Matei Călinescu
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822307679
Category : Avant-Garde (Aesthetics)
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Five Faces of Modernity is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism. The concept of modernity--the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours--is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise. Five Faces of Modernity attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, or symbolism and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

Author: Weert Canzler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317008685
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Mobility is a basic principle of modernity besides others like individuality, rationality, equality and globality. Taking its cue from this concept, this book presents a movement that begins with the macro-social transformations linked to mobility and ends with empirical discussions on the new forms of mobility and their implications for everyday life. The book opens with a study of the social changes unique to the second age of modernity, with contributions from Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Wolfgang Bonss and Sven Kesselring. It continues with a discussion of the implications of these changes for sociological research. Authors such as Vincent Kaufmann, Weert Canzler, Norbert Schneider, Beate Collet, Ruth Limmer and Gerlinde Vogl focus on a series of field examinations, both qualitative and quantitative, of emerging mobilities. The book is a foray into the exciting new field of interdisciplinary mobility research informed by theoretical reflection and empirical investigation.

Author: Marian Aguiar
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816665605
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The ubiquitous railway as a symbol of the tensions of Indian modernity.

Author: Russell Shaw
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1642291129
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Assaults on the dignity and rights of the human person have been central to the ongoing crisis of the modern era in the last hundred years. This book takes a searching look at the roots of this problem and the various approaches to it by the eight men who led the Catholic Church in the twentieth century, from Pope St. Pius X and his crusade against "Modernism" to Pope St. John Paul II and his appeal for a renewed rapprochement between faith and reason. Thus it offers a distinctive, illuminating interpretation of recent world events viewed through the lens of an ancient institution, the papacy, a key champion of human rights under attack in modern times. The fascinating story is told through short profiles of the eight popes combining crucial, often little known, facts about each by an author who is a veteran observer of Church affairs, a former top official of the conference of bishops of the USA, and consultant to the Vatican. It is written clearly and simply, but with carefully documented precision. A special feature are the substantial excerpts from the writ- ings of the popes that give important insights into their personalities and thinking. It also includes a useful overview of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and its pivotal role in reshaping the Catholic Church. Eight Popes and the Crisis of Modernity contains judgments that will be challenged by partisans of both liberal and conservative ideological persuasions. But serious and open-minded readers, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, will find it an informative, timely, and inspiring guide to understanding many central events and issues of our times, while students of Church history will find it indispensable.

Author: Joshua Barker
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837797
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
We live in a world populated not just by individuals but by figures, those larger-than-life people who in some way express and challenge our conventional understandings of social types. This innovative and collaborative work takes up the wide range of figures that populate the social and cultural imaginaries of contemporary Southeast Asia—some familiar only in specific places, others recognizable across the region and even globally. It puts forward a series of ethnographic portraits of figures that represent and give voice to something larger than themselves, offering a view into social life that is at once highly particular and general. They include the Muslim Television Preacher in Indonesia, Miss Beer Lao, the Rural DJ in Thailand, the Korean Soap Opera Junkie in Burma, the Filipino Seaman, and the Photo Retoucher in Vietnam. Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity brings together the fieldwork of over eighty scholars and covers the nine major countries of the region: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. An introduction outlines important social transformations in Southeast Asia and key theoretical and methodological innovations that result from ethnographic attention to the study of key figures. Each section begins with an introduction by a country editor followed by short essays offering vivid and intimate portraits set against the background of contemporary Southeast Asia. The result is a volume that combines scholarly rigor with a meaningful, up-to-date portrayal of a region of the world undergoing rapid change. A reference bibliography offers suggestions for further reading. Figures of Southeast Asia Modernity is an ideal teaching tool for introductory classes to Southeast Asia studies, anthropology, and geography.

Author: Matthew Gandy
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262028255
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
A study of water at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure in Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between visible and invisible domains of urban space, in the tanks and buckets of the global South and the vast subterranean technological networks of the global North. In this book, Matthew Gandy considers the cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Tracing the evolving relationships among modernity, nature, and the urban imagination, from different vantage points and through different periods, Gandy uses water as a lens through which to observe both the ambiguities and the limits of nature as conventionally understood. Gandy begins with the Parisian sewers of the nineteenth century, captured in the photographs of Nadar, and the reconstruction of subterranean Paris. He moves on to Weimar-era Berlin and its protection of public access to lakes for swimming, the culmination of efforts to reconnect the city with nature. He considers the threat of malaria in Lagos, where changing geopolitical circumstances led to large-scale swamp drainage in the 1940s. He shows how the dysfunctional water infrastructure of Mumbai offers a vivid expression of persistent social inequality in a postcolonial city. He explores the incongruous concrete landscapes of the Los Angeles River. Finally, Gandy uses the fictional scenario of a partially submerged London as the starting point for an investigation of the actual hydrological threats facing that city.

Author: Yunrui Deng
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104030186X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
This book argues that future generations of modernity as a whole will shape participatory modernization whether Chinese modernization or Western modernization. The public discourse is inundated with the good and the bad modern events with the acceleration of globalization. This book debates that the biggest question in the twenty-first century is not who will dominate, touting a new world order upon us, but rather that it is the orientation of modernization that haunts our daily realities. This book explores the idea that life is not about living for an identity in any society, it is about the demands for dignity and safety. It goes further to state that there is also a demand for the power of being, and these three elements are beyond identities as modernization moves forward. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book uses theories, data, and philosophy as toolboxes to align with microrealities around the globe. Witnessing modernization and modernizing identities in China and in Australia beyond day by day, the author provides a more suitable, more realistic, and possibly, more nuanced perspective. This book will be of interest to professionals, students, academics, as well as businesspeople with China experience, interested in modernization and identity, the Chinese perspective, and the new generation of Chinese.

Author: Christopher B.R. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131763439X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Examining the interdependent nature of substance, space, and subjectivity, this book constitutes an interdisciplinary analysis of the intoxication indigenous to what has been termed "our narcotic modernity." The first section – Drug/Culture – demonstrates how the body of the addict and the social body of the city are both inscribed by "controlled" substance. Positing addiction as a "pathology (out) of place" that is specific to the (late-)capitalist urban landscape, the second section – Dope/Sick – conducts a critique of the prevailing pathology paradigm of addiction, proposing in its place a theoretical reconceptualization of drug dependence in the terms of "p/re/in-scription." Remapping the successive stages or phases of our narcotic modernity, the third section – Narco/State – delineates three primary eras of narcotic modernity, including the contemporary city of "safe"/"supervised" consumption. Employing an experimental, "intra-textual" format, the fourth section – Brain/Disease – mimics the sense, state or scape of intoxication accompanying each permutation of narcotic modernity in the interchangeable terms of drug, dream and/or disease. Tracing the parallel evolution of "addiction," the (late-)capitalist cityscape, and the pathological project of modernity, the four parts of this book thus together constitute a users’ guide to urban space.