Epochalism is an attitude of respect for the progressive
spirit of the age
''Spirit of the Age'' is a 1977 song by the UK rock group Hawkwind. It was originally recorded and issued on the album '' Quark, Strangeness and Charm''.
The lyrics of the song are composed of two of Robert Calvert's science fiction poems, th ...
and for social and technological advancement, which was contrasted by
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades&n ...
with what he termed the (
essentialist
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Platonic idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In '' Categories'', Aristotle s ...
) valorisation of traditional values. He viewed this distinction as a central social polarity pervading developing nations.
More broadly, Epochalism has been used to describe the
post-Fordist
The concept of post-Fordism was originally invented by the economist Robin Murray (economist), Robin Murray in the British magazine ''Marxism Today'' in 1988. It referred to the emergence of new Methods of production, production methods defined by ...
,
postmodern
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
belief that the current era or epoch represents a fundamental clean break with the past; is something unique in human history; and due to this radical change, previous rules will no longer apply.
Polarities in emerging economies
Epochalism in the developing world can be seen purely as a progressive force, favouring movement toward
secularisation
In sociology, secularization () is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatica ...
and industrial advance, as opposed to a regressive return to the traditional values of community and
Gemeinschaft
''Gemeinschaft'' () and ''Gesellschaft'' (), generally translated as "community and society", are categories which were used by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in order to categorize social relationships into two types. The Gesellscha ...
. However, in practice the situation is likely to be more complicated: nationalist struggles for independence have often relied on essentialist appeals to authentic ethnic communities and cultural practices, as well as to epochalism, in order to free themselves from dependence on a Western
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , .
Models can be divided in ...
/Western control.
Internet epochalism
The rapid rise of the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...
led many
digerati
The digerati (or digirati) are the elite of digitalization, social media, content marketing, computer industry and online communities. The word is a portmanteau, derived from "digital" and " literati", and reminiscent of the earlier coinage ''gl ...
to see it as an unprecedented human phenomenon, wholly divorced from all past experience.
Evgeny Morozov
Evgeny Morozov (born 1984) is a writer, researcher, and intellectual from Belarus who studies political and social implications of technology. He was named one of the 28 most influential Europeans by ''Politico'' in 2018.
Life and career
Morozo ...
used the term epochalism to describe the prevalent 21st-century belief that "one is living in truly exceptional times – an intellectual fallacy I call 'epochalism. Previous technological advances, as with the age of railways or the age of broadcasting, had of course made very similar claims for themselves; and
A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classics, classical scholar and poet. He showed early promise as a student at the University of Oxford, but he failed his final examination in ''literae humaniores'' and t ...
a century before had denounced the mind "which commands no outlook upon the past or the future, but believes that the fashion of the present, unlike all fashions heretofore, will endure perpetually".
Late modernity
Late modernity (or liquid modernity) is the characterization of today's highly developed global society, societies as the continuation (or social progress, development) of modernity rather than as an element of the succeeding era known as postmo ...
however, with its shortening of awareness of time-spans and its focus on the present, makes the short-sightedness of epochalism - with what Morozov saw as its dark fetishism of Internet-based solutions
[E. Morozov, ''To Save Everything, Click Here'' (2013) p. 36] - an increasingly plausible intellectual posture.
See also
References
External links
"Against Epochalism: An Analysis of Conceptions of Change in British Sociology"by Mike Savage in ''Cultural Sociology'' July 2009 vol. 3 no. 2 217-238
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