Modernism Essay

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Introduction
The advancement of sociological theory and philosophy into modernism and postmodernism has been a truly self-reflexive era of inspection of practices. A key intellectual here is Michel Foucault with his archeological analysis of punitive practices. More contemporary and darker sides of modernity have a similar methodological strife with positivist thought. A major question that modernists and postmodernists face is about legitimacy of discourse and practice. Specifically in academia as Foucault makes clear academia is intertwined with power. To understand legitimate power, we must view it through the lens of its practice. Postmodernists and some modernists moved away from a mystified critique of structures and actors and instead focused its discourses on practices, ideas, and conceptualizations.
The modernist project is defined by its discourse in reason and progress specifically the ideas of rationalism and liberalism. It asks itself if people are truly free and rational. Are people and science the master of its own fate or are they controlled by a power outside of itself yet within everyone? Modernity is characterized by domination of man by man through informal and formal social controls. Formal controls come from a continual politicization of life, with the power over mortality given to political states. Informal social controls can be seen as existing practice through social agents enforcing normativity through shaming.
Norbert Elias in his piece Shame and Repugnance explains an element that major theorists such as Bourdieu (with symbolic power) and Goffman (with losing face) have used in their analysis. Elias, in his more contemporary modern theory, states that shame and repugnance are just as characteristic t...

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...ers states that not only has modernity controlled the populace through social action but also controls its minds through controlling knowledge construction and scientific exploration. Maybe rationalists have asked too much of science by separating nonhumans and humans rather than understanding knowledge creation in a relativist way that examines hybrid networks that connect nonhumans and humans. According to Latour the task of a modern scientist is to attempt to make connections through this network and piece together an objective knowledge. This intellectual discourse have been a major challenge to sociology in raising fundamental questions about positivist and anti-positivist, amodernity versus modernity and postmodernity, and the way that sociology has conceptualized and categorized groups with a constant demand for solid group boundaries that might not exist.

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