degree of critical acumen. The story ends, as do all fables, with some advice:
do not resent the condition of modernity, counsels Weber, because a world
devoid of intrinsic purpose positively overXows with opportunities for indi-
viduality and freedom. Modernity calls one to make one’s own valuations, to
choose for oneself among competing meanings:
So long as life remains immanent and is interpreted in its own terms,... the
ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle
can never be brought to aWnal conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive
choice. (Weber 1981 , 152 )
For Weber, the anti-modern project is futile because disenchantment, al-
though never complete, is not a reversible historical trajectory. And so it is
most proWtably met by a heroic will to choose rather than by a cowardly slide
into resentment.
The more recent work of Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash on
‘‘reXexive modernization’’ pursues a similar line of response. They argue that
modernity is now:
a global society, not in the sense of a world society but as one of ‘‘indeWnite space.’’ It
is one where social bonds have eVectively to be made, rather than inherited from the
past.... It is decentred in terms of authorities, but recentred in terms of opportun-
ities and dilemmas, because focused upon new forms of interdependence. (Beck,
Giddens, and Lash 1994 , 107 )
In its emphasis on theinevitabilityof the disenchantment process, Weber’s
tale distinguishes itself both from attempts to re-enchant modernity (Moore
1996 ; Sikorski 1993 ; Berman 1981 ) and from attempts to identify opportunities
for wonder and enchantment in secular, counter-cultural, or even commer-
cial sites within modernity (Bennett 2001 ; During 2002 ). Weber’s version also
diverges from Marx’s story of modernity, which explores the possibility of a
more radical escape.
2 Commodity Fetishism
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Karl Marx’s ( 1818 – 1883 ) narrative of modernity focuses upon two linked
social processes not emphasized by Weber: commodiWcation and fetishiza-
tion. A commodity is an article produced for market exchange rather than
modernity and its critics 217