Modernity Defined (Macfarlane's indices)

• A ROUGH CATEGORIZATION OF MODERNITY
  • Pre-modern:
    • hunter-gatherer (Neolithic)
    • tribal (Paleolithic)
    • ancient (Egypt, Rome, India, etc)
  • Modern:
    • early modern (essential features, minus industrialization)
    • modern (social and political system plus industrialization)
    • Post-modern: modernity plus new communications technology, etc.
• SOME FEATURES OR INDICES OF MODERNITY
  • Social structure and stratification
  • Movement from status to contract
  • Movement from the group to the individual
  • Absence of peasantry
  • Geographical mobility
  • Demographic regime (beyond Malthusian Crisis)
  • Economic growth
  • Technological growth
  • Scientific and open universe obeying laws
  • Religious tolerance
  • Disenchantment of the world
  • Predictable and universal law
  • Political openness
  • Rational bureaucracy
  • Use of abstract symbolic instruments:
  • money
  • literacy