Comp. by: VPugazhenthi Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_M Date:1/4/
09 Time:15:19:41 Filepath:H:/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-9781405132879/appln/3B2/
revises/9781405132879_4_M.3d
link is established by rendering modernity as
an implicit adjectival, and thus clarifying, part
of any of the nouns just listed. In other words,
while ‘ways of thinking’, ‘economic practices’
or ‘modes of transportation’ become paradig-
matically different by being prefaced and
hence associated with ‘modern’, ‘democracy’
and other key concepts appear semantically to
embody ‘the modern’ as such. Furthermore,
throughout its history (however conceptual-
ized), ‘modernity’ has been contested (e.g.
the Counter-Reformation in the seventeenth
century, the Romantic Movement in the late
eighteenth century, the back-to-nature move-
ments of the late nineteenth century, the stu-
dent and worker uprisings associated with
May 1968, or the current religious revival,
especially in the USA).
What perhaps unites most definitions of
‘modernity’ is an emphasis on the notion of
the ‘new’. Modernity is synonymous with
change and thus becomes a declared enemy
of traditions. This is the root of many subse-
quent binary distinctions that characterize
modernity: the ‘new’ is explicitly set apart
from the ‘old’ – and it is the distance between
the two that acquires explanatory power. The
importance of this threshold is encapsulated in
the different figures employed to characterize
modernity: Georg Simmel’s ‘stranger’, Max
Weber’s ‘adventurer’, or the ‘flAˆneur’ and
the ‘gambler’ invoked by Walter Benjamin all
emphasize a border, be it between inside and
outside, old and new, presence and absence
or private and public (Shields, 1992;
Strohmayer, 1997). It is in the nature of such
borderlines to invoke an ‘uncanny’ sense of
existence where the ‘new’ constantly has the
power to threaten or disrupt, as exemplified in
Fritz Lang’s 1931 filmM.
The notion of the ‘new’ (and the close,
intertwined relationship between modernity,
and filmic and urban space: seefilm) also
points us towards another geographical con-
text surrounding modernity: its thoroughly
urban, or better yet metropolitan character
(Ogborn, 1998; Frisby, 2001; Pile, 2005). It
is in urban settings that the ‘new’ materializes
an exuberant side of modernity, where the
‘new’ is not synonymous with order but para-
doxically becomes associated with a set of
practices subverting traditions (Berman
1983). The undermining of sexual mores,
diversification ofconsumptionpractices, the
rise in artistic freedoms and forms of expres-
sion culminating in the notion of an avant-
garde, the growth in new and decidedly
urbane forms of ‘destructive’ capital assem-bled in the hands of the bourgeoisie so effect-
ively analysed by Marx, or simply the
development of different lifestyles all encom-
pass ‘experiences of modernity’ (Frisby, 2001,
p. 2; see also Glennie and Thrift, 1992) that
are not so easily, if at all, attained in non-urban
spaces. Small wonder, then, that it takes
another quintessentially modern and urban
figure, the detective (as exemplified by virtu-
ally any film noir), to reorder a world threat-
ening to become unreadable. The urban has
become synonymous with the ‘modern’ in
another sense as well: novelty principally also
attaches to architecture, where ‘order’ trans-
lates into a functional approach to questions of
housing and urban design (Dennis, 1994;
Heynen, 1999). L.H. Sullivan’s phrase that
‘form (ever) follows function’ (1896) and A.
Loos’ insistence that ‘ornament is crime’
(1908) together capture the architects’ aspir-
ations materialised in modern buildings.
Rather crucial for any understanding of
modernity is the tension emerging at the
heart of this and related ‘ordering’ impulses:
the tension between any order given or imp-
arted upon architecture or urban design and
the restless, destructive tendencies embodied
by the ever-changing nature of ‘the new’
(Donald, 1999: seemodernism). As postmod-
ernists would later lament (and remaining
within Loos’ dictum), ‘order’ thus becomes
its own ornament.
A solution to this impasse is offered by a
further element common to many definitions
of modernity: the projection of ‘progress’ on to
constantly developing technologies. Effect-
ively reconciling the notion of ‘the new’ with
the desire (or necessity) to impart order, the
very idea of ‘progress’ imparts a sense of dir-
ection to ‘modernity’ and thus renders it
potentially legible. Trusted or not, techno-
logical developments ranging from seafaring
innovations, the invention of paper moneys,
the steam engine, entertainment technologies
such as panoramas or the cinema to theinter-
net of our present age all impacted upon
everyday life in a way that has lent credence
to the idea of an ephemeral and constantly
changing; that is, a modern world that is
defined by its technologically progressing
nature (Asendorf, 1993). As this listing imp-
lies, these technologies have threaded different
places into new conjunctions, and the intensi-
fication of multiple processes oftime–space
compressionunder contemporary modes of
globalizationhas reworked both senses of
place and structures of space (Entrikin,
1991; Hetherington, 1997b; Oakes, 1997).Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 472 1.4.2009 3:19pmMODERNITY