This conclusive chapter provides a synopsis of and comparison between the conceptions of modernity and its alternatives, as they are found in the works of Bauman, Elias and Latour. While this synopsis will be brief, the comparison will be conducted in some detail and will include two other authors, Foucault and Giddens, in order to provide a better assessment of Bauman, Elias and Latour's contributions to contemporary social theory.

Synopsis

As for Bauman, the rationality, effectiveness and impersonality that characterize present-day bureaucratic apparatuses are the distinguishing features of modernity. Its postmodern or “liquid” alternative has none of these traits; rather, uncertainty, contingency and ambivalence define this condition. As for Elias, modernity has two different and contrasting faces that may be designated, respectively, as civilization and barbarity. Elias conceives of civilization as a process connoted by self-control and pacification, which prevails as a consequence of the restraint that honor and morality exert on individuals. By contrast, the breakdown of civilization involves, and is the mark of, barbarity.

Finally, as for Latour, modernity, if defined by a separation between theory and practice, facts and values, science and society, society and nature or humans and nonhumans, has never existed. By virtue of their intimate association, humans and nonhumans have formed hybrids, whose proliferation is the hallmark of our age, though hybrids were also to be found in past ages. Modernity, therefore, has never prevailed. Alternatives to hybrids are, in the current age, failed hybrids, that is, hybrids that have never been viable for some reason, and have therefore not had any lasting life. The set of alternatives is then as follows: modernity versus postmodernity (Bauman); civilization versus barbarity (Elias); successful versus unsuccessful hybrids (Latour). The question is whether these various conceptions of modernity share some trait, what these traits are, if any, and whether these three alternatives to modernity have anything in common. As the following analysis will show, Bauman and Elias share— their differences notwithstanding— a few relevant features bearing on their conceptions of both modernity and its possible alternatives; whereas Latour, when compared to these sociologists, is a maverick thinker.