At the heart of the modern west is the culture of the Enlightenment. Assumptions regarding the unity of humanity, the individual as the creative force of society and history, the superiority of the west, the idea of science as Truth, and the belief in social progress, have been fundamental to Europe and the United States. This culture is now in a state of crisis. Signs of cultural turmoil are everywhere: in the resurgence of religious fundamentalism, in the declining authority of key social institutions, in the enfeeblement of western political ideologies and parties, and in the cultural wars over literary and aesthetic canons and paradigms of knowledge. A broad social and cultural shift is taking place in western societies. The concept of the “postmodern” captures at least certain aspects of this social change.

Modernity is not abruptly coming to an end. In most parts of the globe, modernization remains the chief social goal. Third World societies are absorbing modernizing technologies and ideologies. In societies characterized by agrarian economies, pluralistic local cultural traditions, and paternalistic rulers, promodernization elites often look favorably on the centralizing social dynamic and the universalistic moralities and knowledges of the west. In the west, modernity remains entrenched. The chief signs of modernity have not disappeared: for example, an industrial-based economy; a politics organized around unions, political parties, and interest groups; ideological debates centered on the relative merits of the market and state regulation to ensure economic growth, and the good society; institutional differentiation and role specialization and professionalism within institutions; knowledges divided into disciplines and organized around an ideology of scientific enlightenment and progress; the public celebration of a culture of self redemption and emancipatory hope.