Modernity differs from all preceding forms of social order because of
its dynamism, its deep undercutting of traditional habits and customs,
and its global impact. It also radicallly alters the general nature of
daily life and the most personal aspects of human activity. In fact, one
of the most distinctive features of modernity is the increasing
interconnection between globalizing influences and personal
dispositions. The author analyzes the nature of this interconnection and
provides a conceptual vocabulary for it, in the process providing a
major rethinking of the nature of modernity and a reworking of basic
premises of sociological analysis.
Building on the ideas set out in the author's The Consequences of
Modernity, this book focuses on the self and the emergence of new
mechanisms of self-identity that are shaped by--yet also shape--the
institutions of modernity. The author argues that the self is not a
passive entity, determined by external influences. Rather, in forging
their self-identities, no matter how local their contexts of action,
individuals contribute to and directly promote social influences that
are global in their consequences and implications.
The author sketches the contours of the he calls "high modernity"--the
world of our day--and considers its ramifications for the self and
self-identity. In this context, he analyzes the meaning to the self of
such concepts as trust, fate, risk, and security and goes on the examine
the "sequestration of experience," the process by which high modernity
separates day-to-day social life from a variety of experiences and broad
issues of morality. The author demonstrates how personal
meaninglessness--the feeling that life has nothing worthwhile to
offer--becomes a fundamental psychic problem in circumstances of high
modernity. The book concludes with a discussion of "life politics," a
politics of selfactualization operating on both the individual and
collective levels.
