Varieties of Multiple Modernities: New Research Design

To date, the nascent consequential notion of ‘multiple modernities’ has been predominately grounded in historical research with the purpose of validating the theory. Yet, the notion of multiple modernities represents a radical transformation in the way modernity and, indeed, the contemporary world is viewed. As such, the central aim of this volume is to explore the implications and hidden understanding of the multiple modernities research project beyond historical analysis in order to investigate its wide ranging omnipresent implications as they exist in communication and in the social order of societal membership in contemporary societies.
This volume collects new research about multiple modernities and globalization. It shows the new turn of sociological theory in the contemporary scene with respect to multiple modernities, multi-centrism, transglobality, hybridization and multiculturalism, and explores it as a new area of societal communication – one that takes effect in the sectors of a global society as a ‘society of societies’.
The studies in this book converge to demonstrate that the route of Western modernization, its cultural program and its institutional structure, does not follow the pathway of modernization that we have thus far observed in the emerged new area. Rather, the continuation of the multiple modernities research program is given a new design, researching the social structure and dynamic of postmodern societies, their exchange and the debate about the flow of free resources. But the studies are also evidence that the sociological theory has no normative foundation.

Contributors are: Mehdi P. Amineh, Barrie Axford, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Mark Jarzombek, Werner Krawietz, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Manussos Marangudakis, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Gerhard Preyer, Roland Robertson, Luis Roniger, Yitzhak Sternberg, and Michael Sussman.

Gerhard Preyer is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His research fields are: sociological theory and comparative sociology, philosophy of language and mind. He is the editor-in-chief of ProtoSociology: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and author and editor of, among other works, Intention of Practical Thoughts (2011), Donald Davidson’s Philosophy. From Radical Interpretation to Radical Contextualism (2nd edition, 2011), and Donald Davidson on Truth, Meaning, and the Mental (2012).

Michael Sussman is the CEO of Sussman Corporate Security, an international security consultancy based in Canada, Israel and Hong Kong. He previously worked in the House of Commons Canada, and conducted research at the Truman Centre for the Advancement of Peace, the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Michael Sussman has published many articles on international security, counter terrorism, foreign policy strategy, decision making, predictive analysis, and the Middle East. He conducted his graduate work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya. His publications, radio and television interviews have been issued in different languages in many countries. He was also the assistant to S.N. Eisenstadt and worked on research on 'multiple modernities’ with him.