Historical Sociology, Modernity, and Postcolonial Critique

MODERNITY IS ONE OF THE CENTRAL CONCEPTS of sociology, with sociology itself frequently understood as emerging as a modern form of reflection upon associated historical processes. 1 The sociological understanding of modernity typically rests on ideas of the modern world emerging out of the processes of economic and political revolution located in Europe and underpinned by the cultural changes brought about by the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. Such an understanding conflates Europe with modernity and renders the process of becoming modern, at least in the first instance, one of endogenous European development. Coterminous with this argument is the idea that the rest of the world was external to these worldhistorical processes and that colonial connections and processes were insignificant to their development. While historical accounts of the two revolutions—and, by implication, of modernity itself—have not remained unchanged over time, what has remained constant has been the historiographical frame—of autonomous endogenous origins and subsequent global diffusion—within which these events are located. This frame, or grand narrative, is Eurocentric in character, and it is this which remains in place even when the particular histories within it are contested. Not only have “others” not been recognized as constitutive of the canonical “twin revolutions,” but the potential contribution of other events (and the experiences of non-Western “others”) to the historical-sociological paradigm has rarely been considered. As Steven Seidman remarks, sociology’s emergence coincided with the high point of Western imperialism, and yet “the dynamics of empire were not incorporated into the basic categories, models of explanation, and narratives of social development of the classical soci