A Comparison of Conceptions of "Post-Modernity" (PM) and "Radicalised Modernity" (RM)*

Post-Modernity 
Radicalised Modernity
1. Understands current transitions in epistemological terms or as dissolving epistemology altogether. 1. Identifies the institutional developments which create a sense of fragmentation and
dispersal.
2. Focuses upon the centrifugal tendencies of current social transformations and their dislocating character. 2. Sees high modernity as a set of circumstances in which dispersal is dialectically connected to profound tendencies towards global integration.
3. Sees the self as dissolved or dismembered by the fragmenting of experience. 3. Sees the self as more than just a site of intersecting forces; active processes of reflexive self-identity are made possible by modernity.
4. Argues for the contextuality of truth claims or sees them as "historical." 4. Argues that the universal features of truth claims force themselves upon us in an irresistible way given the primacy of problems of a global kind. Systematic knowledge about these developments is not precluded by the reflexivity of modernity.
5. Theorises powerlessness which individuals feel in the face of globalising tendencies. 5. Analyses a dialectic of powerlessness and empowerment, in terms of both experience and action.
6. Sees the "emptying" of day- to-day life as a result of the intrusion of abstract systems. 6. Sees day-to-day life as an active complex of reactions to abstract systems, involving appropriation as well as loss.
7. Regards coordinated political engagement as precluded by the primacy of contextuality and dispersal. 7. Regards coordinated political engagement as both possible and necessary, on a global level as well as locally.
8. Defines post-modernity as the end of epistemology/the individual/ethics. 8. Defines post-modernity as possible transformations moving "beyond" the institutions
of modernity.

*From Consequences of Modernity by Anthony Giddens (p. 151)