Modernity and Culture

Abstract

In earlier chapters I outlined the development of the concept of culture in Marxism and sociology, paying particular attention to the contributions of Gramsci and Weber with their critiques of reductionism and their emphasis on human action and purpose. The discovery of culture as an autonomous realm of human values, action and structure corresponds closely with the emergence of an advanced industrial capitalism with powerful modernising forces that generated a fluid and pluralist social structure, new social classes and fractions of classes, new professions, new industries and services, and populations increasingly concentrated in burgeoning urban centres. And it was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the arts, too, were modernised: art, literature, music (as well as philosophy and psychology) were transformed through the development of new modes of narrative and concepts of time (for example, the stream of consciousness novel); painting and music broke from the traditional mimetic forms to conceive a fleeting and fluid reality with no apparent centre (impressionism in painting, Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern and Berg in music); while the expressionist theatre of Strindberg and Wedekind abandoned all notions of a stable and unified self.