The Logic of Compressed Modernity. Chang Kyung-Sup

The Logic of Compressed Modernity - Chang Kyung-Sup


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      While the condensed and compressive nature of South Korean or other modernity has been induced and intensified by their particular historical and structural conditions, it needs to be pointed out that modernity in general has an intrinsic dynamism. Giddens (1990: 16–17) indicates three main conditions for such dynamism of modernity: namely, “the separation of time and space and their recombination in forms which permit the precise time–space ‘zoning’ of social life; the disembedding of social systems …; and the reflexive ordering and reordering of social relations in the light of continual inputs of knowledge affecting the actions of individuals and groups.” These complex conditions cannot be reproduced identically in every society, but it is safe to say that they are thoroughly relevant in the South Korean context as well. In fact, such conditions seem to have been intensified due to the transnational superimposition of modernity in South Korea under Japanese domination and American influence and, more critically, due to the South Koreans’ own drive for dependent modernization and globalization. Beck (Beck and Grande 2010) presents “second modernity” as a critical alternative to postmodernity, arguing that various (mostly negative) “side-effects” of first or classic modernity add up to a qualitatively different situation in which the fundamental values of classic modernity are still respected, but have to be pursued with radically different social means and institutions under a cosmopolitan paradigm. Beck disputes “methodological nationalism” in social theory and analysis and instead advocates “methodological cosmopolitanism.” In a sense, compressed modernity is already based upon methodological cosmopolitanism since it directly acknowledges and reflects global processes and structures by which the nature of modernity in late-modernizing societies is critically determined. Therborn (2003) also shares this globalist conception of all modernities.

      In Chapter 2, “Compressed Modernity: Constitutive Dimensions and Manifesting Units,” I intend to present a formal definition and core theoretical/historical components of compressed modernity. Compressed modernity consists of multiple dimensions constructed by all possible combinations of temporal (historical) and spatial (civilizational) manifestations of human social activities, relationships, and assets – namely, temporal condensation of historical change, spatial condensation of civilizational compass, compressed mixing of diverse temporalities (eras), compressed mixing of diverse spaces (civilizations), and interactions among the above. Compressed modernity can be manifested at various levels of human existence and experience – that is, personhood, family, secondary organizations, urban/rural localities, societal units (including civil society, nation, etc.), and, not least importantly, the global society. At each of these levels, people’s lives need to be managed intensely, intricately, and flexibly in order to remain normally integrated with the rest of society. Compressed modernity is a critical theory of postcolonial social change, aspiring to join and learn from the main self-critical intellectual reactions of the late twentieth century as to complex and murky social realities in the late modern world, including postmodernism, postcolonialism, reflexive modernization, and multiple modernities.

      As explained in Chapter 4, “Internal Multiple Modernities: South Korea as Multiplex Theatre Society,” modernity – and the process of modernization – can be plural not only across different national societies, as persuasively indicated in Eisenstadt’s “multiple modernities” thesis, but also within each national society. Korea has been particularly distinct in such internal multiplicity of modernities, including colonial dialectical modernity, postcolonial reflexive institutional(ist) modernization, postcolonial neotraditionalist modernity, free world modernity under the Cold War, state-capitalist modernity, cosmopolitan modernity under neoliberal economic globalism, and associative subaltern liberal modernity. These internally diverse modernities reflect a series of overpowering international influences and related local upheavals and confrontations to which Korean society and its people have been subjected since the late nineteenth century. Each of these modernities is not uniquely or exclusively Korean because they have been embedded in the global structures


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