Multiplicity in Non-Linear Systems

Abstract

While analysing the processes of rapid and fundamental change in the contemporary world with diverse cultures, it is clear that reality of the present is different from what was prophesied based on past social theories of the evo lution of modernity. Different societies are in no sense becoming identical fol lowing the cultural programme of ‘western’ modernity (Eisenstadt, 2000). Originator of the term ‘multiple modernities’ and considered a pioneer in advancing an alternative view, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, in his paper in the workshop ‘Paradigms of Change’, developed the concept of ‘multiple moder nities’ in the context of a comparative evolutionary perspective in the social sciences. He based his arguments on the central concept — in classical struc tural evolutionary theory — that of differentiation, cultural and social differ entiation and evolution. At the same time he questioned their stress on the unilineal development of all societies. He sees the process of differentiation as a tendency for expansion of human action, and the core of such processes of differentiation as the ‘decoupling of “formerly” mutually embedded activi ties. Such differentiation may develop with respect to both the structural and symbolic dimensions of social interaction and structure’. Eisenstadt argues that the cultural and institutional patterns constitute different responses to the challenges and possibilities inherent in the core characteristics of the dis tinct civilizational premises of modernity, thereby giving importance to the social processes along with the structural differentiation.