Late Modernity Essay Exam Study Guide

Unit 9: Late Modernity: The Inner Zone, the Outer Zone, the Imperialized Zone, and the Philosophical Zone. What insights does this period of "Late Modernity" have for the current day (e.g., the Fourth Industrial Revolution) politically, economically, technologically, globally and/or philosophically?  

Look back at the list of analogous current events today in the 4th Industrial Revolution on the blog for the start of the unit.

Juxtapose against our themes from class.  Which three resonant with you the most in terms of your understanding? 

Note the various periodizations of Late Modernity (1871-1914) such as La Belle Époque, the Civilized World, the World of Security, Age of Mass Democracy, and the Second Industrial Revolution. Remember that this period ends with the beginning of the catastrophe of World War I, the so-called Great War, or the War to End All Wars.  What do these different labels tell you about this time? 

1. We started with the concept of the "civilized world," and included within it quantitative indices of material betterment (e.g., death rates and standard of living), technological development in the inner zone, as well as immaterial betterment (e.g., Viennese culture as discussed by Zweig). See PowerPoint slides on main page of blog from Gerst lecture. Do inner zones today (e.g., Chicago, New York, London, Berlin, Paris) feel a sense of superiority for their advantages over today's outer and third zone? Does it depend upon class or status? In other words, what insights do you gain from the late 19th century for today? 

2. We looked at the concept of the global economy and what part imperialism played in its creation.  How does the globalization of the late 19th century provide you with insight into the global economy of the late 20th/early 21st century? Examples of India and China provided as well as the outer zone (e.g., Milan). Competitive, interdependency nature of global economy discussed. 

3. We looked at the concept of the expansion of mass democracy and looked at what different kaleidoscopes (liberal, conservative, labor, suffragist) might have thought about the gains made over the last century as well as how those gains impacted how politicians sought to appeal to the people for their votes. 

4. We concluded by looking at various philosophical critiques of the democratic, global, urbanizing world of material advantage. Various thinkers either raised the alarm over what had been lost while others increasingly rejected the Enlightenment belief in reason and progress and found irrationalism as integral to human nature as rationalism. Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Darwin, etc. Some posited solutions as to how humans could render secular institutions to replace religious ones that would alleviate urban alienation. 

Questions to ask yourself: 

On which sections we studied do you want to focus (Palmer, Zweig, Perry, and/or Nietzsche)?  Where do you find interconnections between themes? Would you connect technological trends to geopolitical and economic trends? Would you connect philosophical trends with material and political trends?  Why would you connect them? What significance do they have for today?