Matanle, P. orcid.org/0000-0002-8600-3856 (2001) Driving the Modern Dream--Contemporary Japanese Modernity in Theoretical Perspective. Hosei riron: Journal of Law and Politics, 33 (4). pp. 103-150. ISSN 0286-1577
Abstract
Modernity is as much a state of mind as it is a material condition. As such its quality can most clearly be described as a transformative ethic that has as its engine pushing it forwards and outwards the positivist and economist rationalism that is capitalism. That is to say, with capitalism as its mechanism and its fuel, modernity seeks a progressive and linear transformation of the human experience into a rationally and reflexively ordered life-scape that can be pro-actively controlled and manipulated for the purposes of providing an ever more comfortable, fulfilling, liberating, challenging, and complex life for its human architects. Mediating the mental and the material aspects of modernity are the institutions and organizations which individuals and groups construct in order that they might express their consciousness through the process of creative adaptation. In other words, institutions and organizations are the social mechanisms by which people not only create their environment out of the mental images they have developed but also are the method by which people accommodate themselves to the circumstances of their lives. For at the heart of modernity is the individual's moral responsibility to discover his or her authentic inner consciousness and substantiate it in lived experience.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2001 Niigata University - Niigata Law and Political Science association. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Hosei riron ; The journal of law and politics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | sociological theory; modernity; varieties of capitalism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Apr 2017 11:30 |
Last Modified: | 21 Mar 2018 18:10 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Niigata University - Niigata Law and Political Science association |
Refereed: | Yes |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:114373 |