ABSTRACT
The term “modernity” is a meta-narrative, a signifier that is often tied to different ideological ends, connoting a sense of Western superiority. Formulated as a theoretical defense of the autonomy of culture, Eisenstadt’s multiple modernities thesis marks a shift in the sociological understanding of modernity by pointing out its non-Western forms. A critical reading of Eisenstadt’s view of Israel within a multiple modernities paradigm challenges the universal character that scholars attribute to the theoretical program: Eisenstadt’s sociological interpretation of the “Jewish democracy” is seen as a unique institutional expression that is part of the modern institutional variability. The incorporation of Israel into a multiple modernities thesis positions the former as a social entity that shares the universal mechanisms that all modern societies possess. This analysis, however, reproduces the governing Zionist narratives underlying Israel’s political framework as a “Jewish and democratic state” and provides the sociological argumentation to reassure Israel’s existing exclusivist political structures and discourse. In doing so, multiple modernities enables to obfuscate the pervasiveness of the essentialist dimensions inherent in the Zionist imaginary. Eisenstadt’s late understanding of Israel as being similar to a Western nation-state proves correct recent postcolonial critiques which argue that despite its theoretical novelty, the thesis preserves the West as modernity’s focal point. It is further argued that just as multiple modernities refrain from addressing the broad historical and structural conditions from which the multiple forms of modernity emerged (e.g. colonialism), its application to the case of Israel overlooks the fact that it shared affinities with other patterns of settler colonization projects.
