ABSTRACT
The notion of "multiple modernities" denotes a certain view of the contemporary world—indeed of the history and characteristics of the modern era—that goes against the views long prevalent in scholarly and general discourse. The idea of multiple modernities presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world—indeed to explain the history of modernity—is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs. The cultural and political program of modernity, as it developed first in Western and Central Europe, entailed, as Bjorn Wittrock notes, distinct ideological as well as institutional premises. The cultural program of modernity entailed some very distinct shifts in the conception of human agency, and of its place in the flow of time. The modern program entailed also a radical transformation of the conceptions and premises of the political order, the constitution of the political arena, and the characteristics of the political process.
