ABSTRACT
In the European context, early modernity refers to the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when territorial states became major vehicles for resource mobilization and for the construction of collective identities. Theories of modernization and of modernity, as formulated in the fifties and sixties, were based on the assumption of convergence. Modernity has spread to most of the world but has not given rise to a single civilization. The cultural codes of modernity have not been shaped by the evolutionary potentialities of societies, nor by the natural unfolding of their traditions, nor even by their placement in a new international setting. The European constellation in the early modern and Enlightenment period serves as an ideal type to measure deviances, to identify differences encountered in other civilizations. The recognition of multiple modernities entails an antievolutionary thrust.
