High modernism
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High modernism (also known as high modernity) is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world.[1][2] The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Definition
High modernity is distinguished by the following characteristics:[3]
- Strong confidence in the potential for scientific and technological progress, including a reliance on the expertise of scientists, engineers, bureaucrats and other intellectuals.
- Attempts to master nature (including human nature) to meet human needs.
- An emphasis on rendering complex environments or concepts (such as old cities or social dynamics) legible, most often through spatial ordering (for example, city planning on a grid).
- Disregard for historical, geographical and social context in development.
Relation to modernity
Modernity relates to the modern era and the aesthetic qualities of
Modernity and high modernity are concerned with human progress and the potential of human intervention to bring about positive change in the structure of society; however, high modernity's visions of societal change rely on the expertise of intellectuals and scientific innovation, making high modernity a more elitist project than its predecessor.[4]
Both concepts operate on an ambiguous understanding of what the final stage of societal progress will entail. While modernity is retrospective in its prescriptions for the future and promotes organic growth, high modernity advocates a complete transformation of existing conditions and the creation of a blank slate.[5] This break from the historical and geographical contexts of places often results in the application of standardized models to a variety of locations, often with socially disruptive consequences (see examples below).
Modernity and modernization are associated with capitalist and industrial development, and emphasize the increased movement of goods, people, capital and information (see Globalization). This emphasis on economic freedom and capitalism is accompanied by the decline of traditional forms of society and the rise of the nation-state.[6] In contrast, high modernism transcends traditional political ideological divisions in its reordering of society towards a utopian ideal as such ideal societies are highly subjective across the political spectrum.[7] Furthermore, projects characteristic of high modernity are best enacted under conditions of authoritarian and technocratic rule, as populations are more easily controlled and changed.[8]
Historical precedents
Despite its name, high modernism is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. One of the first manifestations of high modernism appeared in urban planning. In the 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Hippodamus proposed the grid plan in urban planning, and implemented the grid plan in construction of Piraeus (the port of Athens), which has remained largely unchanged to this day.
Notably, our main source on Hippodamus is Aristotle, who criticized his grid plan in Politics II.8. Thus, criticism of high modernism also has a long history.
The Industrial Revolution was a major impetus of high modernism. In industrial production, standardization is necessary for economies of scale, and standardization necessarily increases legibility and homogenizes local context. The drive to standardization can be seen in Henry Ford's quote concerning consumer choice of Ford Model T: "You can have any color you want so long as it's black."
The high modernist method of governance has also been practiced in the
Although the brutality of the Qin regime contributed to its rapid collapse, the outcomes of its unification projects remained largely intact throughout history. The unification of philosophy remained intact too, but with Confucianism replacing Legalism.
The grid plan is a common motif in Chinese and Japanese capitals, which is visible in the maps of Chang'an, Beijing, and Heian-kyō.
Modernization and development
Standardized legal names
Throughout most of human history, the act of naming is a local and informal affair. For example, the local names of geographical features depend critically on how they appear to the local people. The towns of Durham and Guilford in the state of Connecticut are connected by a road, which those who live in Durham call the “Guilford Road,” while those living in Guilford call it the “Durham Road.” The same informality and a focus on use over uniformity characterizes personal naming. For example, around the year 1700 in England, a mere eight given names accounted for nearly ninety percent of the total male population [John, Edward, William, Henry, Charles, James, Richard, Robert]. This did not pose a problem to local people, who would add informal by-names for disambiguation (“John-the-miller,” “John-the shepherd”). Furthermore, a personal name can change over time, as a person takes on new traits and loses old traits. It could also be different in different contexts, such as with nicknames, stage names, etc.
With modern state-building, the problem of illegible naming became acute. Consequently, a common naming system of Patronymic surname was promoted at the expense of informal local naming systems. Whereas in Europe, patronymy was the exception in 14th century, it became the norm in 19th century. This process reached its logical conclusion with the national identification number, which allows unique identification of any citizen across their entire lifespan. It is purely a naming system for the state administration, completely devoid of any personal or local meaning.[10]
This state-sponsored standardization apparatus is clearly visible in Iceland, where the Icelandic Naming Committee maintains an official list of approved Icelandic given names.
Modernist housing
Modernist architecture is an architecture style based on modern construction materials, particularly glass, steel, and reinforced concrete, and the idea that form should follow function (functionalism). When applied to architecture intended for human residence, it is called modernist housing.
The main proponent of architectural modernism,
Modernist housing has been implemented extensively in the form of
In Singapore, public housing is administered by the
Despite its origin in the west, modernist housing projects have met with far less success in Western countries. The most iconic failure is the Pruitt–Igoe housing project, a housing complex of 33 buildings, of 11 stories each, first occupied in 1954. Living conditions rapidly deteriorated, and it was demolished in 1972. It came to become a symbol of the failures of urban renewal, public-policy planning and public housing. Some,[17] such as the architectural historian Charles Jencks,[18] and journalist Tom Wolfe,[19] argued that it demonstrated the error of architectural modernism itself.
These claims are problematized both by the long-term functioning of modernist housing projects outside of the United States, as well as by multiple
Development in the Soviet Union
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Despite the strong association of modernization with Western society, high modernism also found purchase in the Soviet Party, under Nikita Khrushchev. Following the death of Joseph Stalin, Khrushchev retooled Soviet policy to include most of the ideas of Western high modernity with socialist undertones, emphasizing the role of science in providing progress without exploitation or social inequity.[24] It social sphere it went further as to aspirations to reconstruct the whole human society and formation of New Soviet Man.[25] Both the Soviet Union and the United States viewed the modernization of the developing world as a way to expand their respective spheres of influence and create new economic markets; however, it was the Soviet Union and other autocratic regimes during this period that adopted high modernism as the optimal vision to bring about modernization.
Development in the third world
Geographer
Following the successes of the
The overwhelming enthusiasm for the power of science and technology to manage the human and natural world encouraged regimes to attempt monumental development projects that would rapidly catapult developing countries into Western-style development.[32] High modernism emphasized spatial order as rational design; by standardizing, simplifying and ordering physical space, otherwise complex concepts or entities could be made legible and more easily controlled, including economies.
Brasília
During the first half of the twentieth century, Brazil was a primarily agricultural nation that was economically reliant on the United States. Beginning in the 1950s, Brazilian elites sought to reinvent Brazil's economy through import substitution industrialization. The modernization of the Brazilian economy was also accompanied by grand designs to improve education, culture, health care, transportation systems, community organization, property distribution, and administration in order to spark a new sense of national agency in the population.[33]
Part of this grand vision for Brazil's future was the relocation of the nation's capital from the coastal Rio de Janeiro to a new inland site named Brasília. Essentially located in the wilderness, Brasília was to be a “single-function, strictly administrative capital,” says political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott.[34] Here, long-considered plans for a new capital were finally able to come to fruition thanks to global enthusiasm for the potential of technology. Brasília's massive scale, rational design and cultural offerings, all built from the ground up in the forests of Brazil made it the ultimate manifestation of high modernity.[35] The project's chief architect, Oscar Niemeyer, was strongly influenced by Soviet high modernism in his prescriptions for the new capital as the Soviet Union began to slowly open up to the rest of the world in a new period of internationalism.[36] Despite the cultural and ideological differences of the two countries, both shared common ground in their determination to modernize, strong state authority and a strong belief in the doctrine of high modernity.[37]
The new Brazilian capital was completed in under four years and was presented to the world upon its completion in 1960 as the epitome of urban modernism.
Total state control of development was critical to the creation of utopian high modernist cities by the CIAM, as it prevented conflict between the planned ideal society and the incoherence of imposing this model on existing conditions.[41]
Following the completion of the city, it became apparent that Brasília’s high modernist design had overlooked the complexities of urban space and had overestimated the ability of functional, rational design to improve socio-political order. Planners’ focus on orienting mobility in the city around automobile traffic had eliminated the street as a place for public gathering; the removal of street corners in favour of
Inuit and the Canadian military
State reliance on high modernity to control human populations during the Cold War was not limited to the US. In
The newly constructed towns of Frobisher Bay and Inuvik were ambitiously designed by federal officials to overcome the previously 'uninhabitable' arctic environment and rapidly incorporate the Inuit into the modern age;[47] however, the disregard for the local conditions and opinions of northerners resulted in spatial segregation of Inuit and military personnel in the two towns. In pursuit of a modernized, self-sufficient northern settlement, state-led projects to stabilize the nomadic Inuit in towns disrupted native resource-based economies and contributed to spatial segregation, social inequity, health problems and cultural dislocation.[48]
In the arts
Visual arts and music
Cultural critic
- Much of the post-WWII high modernism in America and the rest of the western world is antihumanist, hostile to notions of community, of any form of humanism. It becomes about the lack of meaning, the need to create our own significance out of nothing. The highest level of significance, that of the elite, becomes abstraction. So the concept of the evolutionary elite arises again, deliberately excluding those who 'haven't evolved.'[49]
High modernism is exemplified in the writings of
Literature
The term "high modernism" as used in literary criticism generally lacks the pejorative connotations it has in other contexts. High literary modernism, on the contrary, is generally used to describe a subgenre of literary modernism, and generally encompasses works published between the end of the
See also
- High culture
- High Middle Ages, a periodization correspondent to high modernity
- Fordism
- Manifest Destiny
- New Frontier
- Scientism
- Technocentrism
- Technological utopianism
- Technological progress
- Techno-progressivism
- Progress
- United States in the 1950s
References
- ^ James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 4.
- ^ "The Best-Laid Plans". archive.nytimes.com.
- ^ Scott, pp. 4-5; Peter J. Taylor, Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 18, 32.
- ^ Scott, p. 94-96
- ^ Taylor, pp. 14, 40-41.
- ^ Volker H. Schmidt, "Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?" Current Sociology 54, no. 77 (2006): p. 80; Taylor, p. 39.
- ^ Tobias Rupprecht, "Socialist High Modernity and Global Stagnation: A Shared History of Brazil and the Soviet Union During the Cold War," Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011): p. 522; Scott, pp. 88-89.
- ^ Scott, p. 5, 94.
- ^ World and Its Peoples: Eastern and Southern Asia, p. 36
- S2CID 146687944.
- ^ "The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
- ^ Hong Kong Housing Authority (2021-03-31). "香港房屋委員會年報 Hong Kong Housing Authority Annual Report" (PDF). [主頁 | 香港房屋委員會及房屋署]. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-02-04. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
- Census and Statistics Department (Hong Kong) (14 January 2022). "Housing and Property". Census and Statistics Department. Archivedfrom the original on 2022-02-04. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
- ^ "Coming: A housing record". The Straits Times. Singapore. 6 July 1960. p. 7. Retrieved 19 May 2021 – via NewspaperSG.
- ^ "HDB | About Us". www.hdb.gov.sg. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
- ^ Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade & Industry, Republic of Singapore (September 2021). "Population Trends, 2021, ISSN 2591-8028" (PDF). Singapore Department of Statistics. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 Jan 2022. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
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- ^ Rupprecht, pp. 509, 522.
- ISBN 978-0-394-56926-0.
- ^ Taylor, p. 18.
- ^ Lwazi Siyabonga Lushaba, Development as Modernity, Modernity As Development (Dakar, Senegal: Counsel for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2009), pp. 2-4; Kimber Charles Pearce, ‘’Rostow, Kennedy, and the Rhetoric of Foreign Aid’’ (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2001), p. 29.
- ^ Pearce, p. 3.
- ^ Zaheer Baber, “Modernization Theory and the Cold War,” ‘’Journal of Contemporary Asia’’ 31, no. 1 (2001): p. 74.
- ^ Lushaba, pp. 2-3
- ^ Walt Whitman Rostow, “The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960),” in ‘’From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change’’, ed. J. Timmons Roberts and Amy Hite (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 2000), pp. 100-101.
- ^ Schneider notes in his evaluation of James Scott’s analysis of villagization in Tanzania that development failures in this period were not always attributable to ‘’high’’ modernism. In the case of Tanzanian villagization, modernization projects were driven by policy makers acting on their own hubris as creators of a modern state, rather than as proponents of scientific rationality. Schneider, pp. 32-33
- ^ Anthropologist Tanya Li notes that in addition to the well-known “high modern, state-driven projects of rural and urban planning,” regimes also conducted modernization initiatives through less conspicuous methods of education and technologies of management (including maps, censuses and surnames). James Holston, “The Spirit of Brasília: Modernity as Experiment and Risk,” in ‘’City/Art: The Urban Scene in Latin America,’’ ed. Rebecca E. Biron (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 92; Tanya Li, “Beyond the ‘State’ and Failed Schemes,” ‘’American Anthropologist’’ New Series 107, no. 3 (2005): p. 386; Rupprecht, pp. 507-508
- ^ Scott, p. 118
- ^ Rupprecht, p. 508
- ^ Rupprecht, p. 510
- ^ Rupprecht, p. 509
- ^ Holston, 86.
- ^ Holston, p. 93; Scott, p. 120
- ^ Holston, p. 96; Scott, p. 125.
- ^ Holston, p. 93.
- ^ Holston, pp. 94-95; Scott, pp. 120-121, 126.
- ^ Holston, p. 97.
- ^ Holston, p. 103; Scott, pp. 127, 130.
- ^ Matthew Farish and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, "High Modernism in the Arctic: Planning Frobisher Bay and Inuvik," Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009): p. 520.
- ^ Peter C. Dawson, "Seeing Like an Inuit Family: The Relationship Between House Form and Culture in Northern Canada," Études/Inuit/Studies 30, no. 2 (2006): 120; Farish and Lackenbauer, pp. 518, 535, 538.
- ^ Farish and Lackenbauer note that while Canada did not possess an authoritarian government to enforce high modernist planning, the limited political agency of native northerners in the early years of the Cold War allowed the Canadian government and military to administer their plans in a similar manner to authoritarian regimes. Farish and Lackenbauer, pp. 517, 521.
- ^ Dawson, p. 117; Farish and Lackenbauer, pp. 537–539.
- ^ Interview with Bram Dijkstra, conducted by Ron Hogan, for beatrice.com. (Accessed Aug. 17, 2006)
- ^ Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch
- ^ Milton Babbitt, "Who Cares if You Listen" (originally in High Fidelity, Feb. 1958)
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- mass culture, Postmodernism, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)