BRICS: New building blocks of the World Order Architecture

The problem of "multiple modernities" is not only a key challenge for public and political thought, but also a topic for current journalistic and political discussions. Indeed, the multiplication of modernity was initially a pressing problem, which only then rose to the level of an intellectual challenge. Today, BRICS is an acronym used every day in newspaper and political discourse. It refers to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. 1 Its use is intended to signal that the current world consists of more parts than the two or three poles of the Soviet Union and Third World countries, and that its stability, accordingly, requires a more nuanced architecture. However, it is often emphasized that these building blocks of the architecture of the global order are by no means the same and construction with their use threatens to be quite difficult. It is at this point that the question of multiple modernities arises, even if it is not always formulated openly.

This article is based on the results of the scientific seminar "Multiple Moderns and a global post-secular society", which was held on May 4_6, 2011 at the University of Tor Vergata (Rome). The English version of this article will appear in the collection: Multiple Modernities and Postsecular Societies / Eds. Massimo Rosati and Kristina Stoeckl. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012 (Forthcoming). The rights to publish the article are provided by Ashgate Publishing house.

1. The letter S in the abbreviation BRICS stands for South Africa or South Africa.

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If you look closely, the bricks of BRICS are really very different. In the very center are the RIC countries, which are traditionally considered as the successors of ancient civilizations. These are real blocks, which, although they have survived some polishing, but, nevertheless, still remain identical to themselves. This image, among others, is replicated by the scientist who actually inspired the very discussion about multiple modernities. I am referring to Shmuel Eisenstadt. However, I have every reason to doubt the adequacy of such an image. The thesis that long periods of socialist reorganization or colonial rule affect socio-cultural relations is greatly underestimated in comparison with the thesis that the multiplication of modernity results from the superimposition of crystallized civilizations with their stable "cultural programs" on European modernity, which took place after 1800.2 To better understand why this particular aspect has become the focus of discussions about the multiplicity of moderns, it is necessary to briefly reconstruct the context that led to the beginning of such discussions.

Until the late 1960s, modernization theory provided sociology with an all-encompassing and fairly consistent approach to the comparative study of modern societies and their long-term transformations, from a certain beginning of modernity in Europe and North America about two hundred years ago and beyond. However, since the 1970s, this theory has been increasingly discredited: first, by the updated social theory, which contrasted the active and creative principle with any ideas about self-developing evolution; second, by the linguistic and microhistorical turn that called into question the possibility of comprehending large-scale social phenomena and their long-term consistent development; third,by the use of a new approach to the development of postcolonial studies and world-system theory have drawn attention to Western dominance - rather than "developmental" flaws - as the reason for diverging societal trajectories. Such critical discussions resulted in the rejection of all inclusive approaches

2. For a critique of the civilizational approach to the study of modernity, see: Wagner P. From Interpretation to Civilization - and Back: Trajectories of European and Non-European Modernities / / European Journal of Social Theory. 2011. Vol. 14. No. 1.

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to analyze aggregate social configurations and their historical trajectories. Comparative historical sociology finds itself in a chaotic situation.3
However, by the end of the 20th century, the situation changed somewhat - the concept of "multiple moderns" and the associated research program tried to correct the situation. This innovative approach returned to the ambitious efforts of modernization theory, and he proposed to conduct a comparative study of societies around the world, covering an even longer period of time: from the so-called axial time of the mid-first millennium BC onwards. At the same time, this theory attempted to provide a constructive response to the main criticisms of modernization theory. Instead of the thesis that there is a unified logic of evolution and the ultimate convergence of societal trajectories, the theory of" multiple modernities " insists on the fundamental difference between modern social configurations. Instead of postulating the normative and / or functional superiority of the West, it develops the idea of multiple forms of modernity, which does not imply a conceptually predetermined hierarchy of development. Instead of the postulate of structural and functional predestination, it refers to the interpretive involvement of a person in the world, which leads to the emergence of cultural programs that set the fundamental interpretive patterns of social life. In short, the current diversity of forms of modernity is explained by the meeting of historical cultural communities, often referred to as "civilizations", with the ideas of autonomy and domination inherent in modernity, which were presented to the world in the most articulate form - but not without contradictions - by Europe. In the process of its transformation towards modernity, each of the fundamental cultural programs retains its own specifics, and thus there is no reason to expect an eventual convergence of societies; on the contrary, we should expect divergences. This approach was quite rightly considered as introducing a new stream into comparative historical sociology4.

3. For a more detailed analysis, see: Wagner P. As Intellectual History Meets Historical Sociology. Historical Sociology after the Linguistic Turn // Handbook of Historical Sociology (Eds. Gerard Delanty and Engin Isin). London: Sage, 2003. P. 168 - 179.

4. For a more detailed review, see in articles from the following collection: Social Theory and Regional Studies (Ed. Arjomand Said). Forthcoming, 2012.

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Given the achievements of this theory, as well as the intellectual environment from which it emerged, some of its shortcomings can not but surprise. Ignoring or ignoring the new emphasis on action, on the contexts of action and speech, as well as on the event of colonialism, which is characteristic of modern social theory, makes the ideas of the approach under consideration about "modernity" and the "cultural program" too collectivist and smooth. In fact, it postulates the unity of interpretive patterns in very large communities, as well as the continuity of the underlying cultural program, which persists for long periods of time.5 As a result, conflicts within communities about their own existence in the world, as well as something more than just a gradual transformation of interpretive patterns, almost completely fall out of the field of view of this approach.

The reason why one of the most detailed approaches to the study of various forms of modernity has such serious shortcomings is twofold. On the one hand, the most sophisticated intellectual critics of modernization theory have been unable to develop a historical and sociological approach suitable for studying large-scale social congurations. 6 On the other hand, events in the world showed the urgency of such a sociological approach. Among these events, two stood out in particular. First, the rise of the Japanese economy, which turned out to be able to overtake the supposedly more advanced economies of the West, in particular, the US economy. This proved that no cultural background in the form of Protestantism is required to achieve high degrees of "rationalism"; in turn, an organizational analysis of Japanese capitalism showed that the "rationality" of economic action in Japan is very different from the dominant one in the West. Second, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 took place in a society that was considered much more advanced on the linear scale of modernization than many others. However, revo-

5. For an appropriate critique, see Smith J. Civilizational Analysis and Intercultural Models of American Societies / / Journal of Intercultural Studies. 2009. Vol. 30. No. 3. P. 233 - 248; Delanty G., Aurea M. Brazil and the Multiple Modernities Framework, Proto-Sociology. Forthcoming, 2012.

6. Более подробно см.: Wagner P. The Future of Sociology: Understanding the Transformations of the Social // History and Development of Sociology (Ed. Crothers Charles). UNESCO on-line Encyclopedia, 2010.

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Not only did Lucia re-establish a political regime based on religious principles, but she also gained a large following in her own and other societies. If we follow the implicit philosophy of history embedded in the theory of modernization, then this simply could not have happened. In the absence of more convincing approaches, both of these events were too easily interpreted from the perspective of a civilizational approach that emphasized the long-term isolation and relative cultural homogeneity of Japanese society, as well as certain characteristic political features of key Islamic societies.

In our opinion, the analysis of the socio-cultural transformations of Japan and Iran over the past fifty years requires a slightly different approach, but its elaboration is beyond the author's competence, and this is not the task of this article. We have mentioned the development of these societies only to suggest that the plausibility of the "multiple modernity" theory is more related to the constellation in which "Old World" societies have undergone large-scale transformations in a world of universal interconnectedness, especially in the absence of convincing alternative approaches to analyzing these transformations, than to the advantages of this theory. To develop a more correct approach to the comparative analysis of all the diversity of modernity, it is necessary to focus directly on the sound comments of critics of modernization theory; for this purpose, we should put the "Old World" with its beneficial soil for civilizational analysis out of brackets and focus on examples of conflict creation/re-creation of socio-political institutions rather than continuity, consensus and community.

Social analysis does not have any problems with relevance, provided that it is aware of the conceptual discussions. So let's move away from the RIC countries from the abbreviation BRICS and pay attention to cases B and C. The rise of two "new societies", Brazil and South Africa, can be considered a challenge to the concept of multiple modernities. For sufficient development of this thesis in a short article, it is necessary to adhere to the manifesto genre, without particularly delving into details. I will draw my inspiration from an approach that predates the "multiple moderns" debate, but has largely been forgotten. I am referring to Louis Hartz's "Founding New Societies," published in 1964. This study

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It is a comprehensive comparative analysis of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia, conducted by various authors, but held together by Hartz's own "theory of the development of new societies" 7.

My argument will be structured in four stages. First, I will argue that the establishment of" new societies " is an event that calls our understanding of modernity into question and requires its expansion. Second, I will look at the ways in which the" new societies "came to be" modern", and perhaps their way of being modern will turn out to be something special. Third, one of the features, probably the most significant, of their " modernity "is what is commonly called the" meeting of the races "(Hartz) or the" colonial meeting " (Talal Asad). In the following sections, Brazil (and sometimes Latin America as a whole), together with South Africa, will appear as key examples, and these cases will be contrasted with the United States as the northern version of the "new society", as well as the "tradition of modernity" (Jacques Derrida), which has become predominant in Europe. Fourthly, I will suggest that recent trends in the South - some of which are precisely responsible for the presence of the letters B and C in the BRICS-indicate the radicalization of modernity, which may well have an impact on the North and which will have to be taken seriously in the emerging world-sociology of modernity..

Modernity and the establishment of societies

Among the many contradictions of modern sociological theories, one was particularly neglected. According to a popular belief, modern societies have emerged from the past.-

7. Hartz's approach was already discussed in an article I wrote some time ago. You can refer to it for a more detailed conceptual study, see: Wagner P. World-sociology Beyond the Fragments / / Social Theory and Regional Studies / Ed. Arjomand Said. Forthcoming, 2012. In the current article, I try to apply my Hartz considerations to comparative analysis. The article is based on the research that I conducted in the framework of the project "Trajectories of Modernity", sponsored by the European Research Council within the framework of the Seventh EU Framework Program. This was research grant number 249,438, which focused on a comparative analysis of Brazil and South Africa with European modernity. I owe much of this article to discussions with members of the research team.

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They are emerging from a radical break with the social configurations that preceded them. Moreover, these societies are seen as placing human freedom and the rationality of their actions at the very center. Thus, the creation of modernity is the moment when new societies are established. However, at the same time, the formation of modern society is explained by the peculiarities of those societies that preceded it: the class struggle in feudalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie; the centralization of political power; Protestantism and the new individualism. Accordingly, modern society is no longer based on the social action of a person; it is considered as the result of the development of social prerequisites, on which a person can only indirectly influence 8. The emergence of modern society should be explained based on the background and background that preceded it. As a result of the "action-structure" controversy in the 1970s and 1980s, "organization / institution of society"9 became a key theoretical concept for explaining human interaction. However, since then, this concept has been subjected to only a very fragmentary analysis.

The emphasis on civilizational analysis in today's modern studies confirms this impression. However, as I have already hinted at above, this problem, if we distinguish between different societal situations, can be subjected to a new consideration. Hartz's concept of "new societies" implies the existence of a founding moment in relatively recent history, and the specific social constellation at the time of this founding can play a key role in understanding the emerging society. Hartz explicitly works with the "New World" and "Old World" dichotomy, the only partial exception to which is South Africa, which was at the very edge of the known world before European expansion. Societies such as those in South Africa are commonly referred to as "settler" societies: Europeans left their settled territories and settled elsewhere. However, one should always bear in mind the fact that all such concepts are the consequences of a view from Europe-

8. Political theory has made the opposite mistake. According to the theory of social contract developed in its framework, the establishment of modern polity was made by individuals with virtually no history and social connections.

9. Giddens E. Organization of society: Essay on the theory of Structuration, Moscow: Academic Project, 2005.

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In fact, there was no "new" world, and Europeans did not settle in an uninhabited territory. The sociological study of "new societies" has always been - albeit implicitly and often unintentionally - the sociological view of elites who saw only the actions of settlers of European origin as the source of new forms of socio-political life (we will raise this issue later).

Putting this criticism aside, such a sociological approach reveals an important nuance that has escaped the more general sociological approaches to the study of modern societies: there are societies in the world that can hardly be analyzed based on any - even the most "soft" -logic of continuity and historical predestination. The fact is that such societies arise from relatively recent meetings between different groups of the population, from the movement in space of at least one of these groups, as well as from the invasion of the territory of an alien, unknown people, which leaves an imprint on the life of other groups. At some point - sometimes sooner, sometimes later - these events lead to the conscious establishment of a society and its associated institutions; most often, such a society is dominated by European settlers or one of their groups.

For Latin America, such a moment was the period of declarations of independence at the beginning of the XIX century, which in the specific case of Brazil marked the foundation of a monarchy that was transformed into a republic at the end of the XIX century. There are also two points in the history of South Africa. First, the establishment in the mid-19th century of the Orange Free State and the Republic of South Africa (Transvaal) by Dutch settlers. This policy was carried out simultaneously with the autochthonous African policy, in particular, with the policies of the Zulu Kingdom and the Xhosa chiefdoms, as well as with the policy of the Cape Colony, which was part of the British Empire and was under the control of settlers of British origin. All this coexisted on the territory of what is today the Republic of South Africa. In 1910, after the South African War, the Union of South Africa was founded under British control.

Moreover, many of these societies have recently gone through a process of re-establishment, which was not the least of which was

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It is aimed at creating conditions of equal freedom for all who live in the territory of these societies, and, more importantly, at correcting historical injustice. In the case of South Africa, this re-establishment occurred after the end of the apartheid regime, based on the formal exclusion of the indigenous population with African roots from the number of citizens, as well as on the deprivation of a number of rights arising from citizenship. This re-establishment was the result of a long struggle for freedom waged by the African National Congress (ANC) for most of the 20th century. A new constitution was adopted in 1994, and since then the ANC has won every political election by a large margin. In Brazil, the process of re-establishment was more smooth. It began with the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 and accelerated in 2002 with the election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a candidate of the Workers ' Party (PP), as President of the Republic. His election at the local and regional levels was preceded by the growing involvement of citizens in the political decision-making process, which in a recent study was called the "civil society uprising" 10. The democratic focus of the reformist agenda was reinforced by the recent election of Dilma Rousseff, the RP candidate who succeeded Lula.

Despite the brevity of such notes, they still allow us to conclude that the history of" new societies " requires a sociological approach that does not begin with an already established society, analyzing its subsequent transformations, but instead focuses on the analysis of the moment when society was established and its further re-establishment through actions and actions. interactions of its members. Thus, the approach of Louis Hartz, with all its limitations, which we will discuss below, seems quite useful. The starting point for Hartz's analysis is people, or rather groups of European settlers, who decide to change their place of residence and leave the societies in which they grew up, in favor of unfamiliar lands where they will encounter new and unprecedented experiences. So initially there is no "Brazil",

10. Holston J. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

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There is no "South Africa", but only people who socialize in one environment and then move to another environment, and the experience they receive has to be interpreted in some way, because we are all "animals that interpret themselves" 11. Through language, these people enter into relationships with each other, as well as with others. with the world; language allows them to give meaning to the world around them. In the process of socialization, they acquire the tools of interpretation, and then take these tools with them when they land on new shores that challenge them in unprecedented ways, as well as when they encounter others whose experiences are unfamiliar to them. Pierre Bourdieu [12] calls the habits of a set of attitudes to action formed in the human body as a result of socialization. According to Bourdieu, if a person faces only those situations that are similar to the situations that formed the habit throughout his life, then the likely scenario is the reproduction of society. However, the superposition of such habits on situations other than those that have shaped them already requires creativity in using existing tools to interpret new challenges; thus, this superposition turns out to be a major source of social change. According to Hartz, this is exactly what happens to European settlers: the "foundation of new societies" is the result of the imposition of specific European habits on a new situation.

Against this background, Hartz identifies several types of" new societies " - depending on the time of the first settlement and the socio-cultural characteristics of the settlers. Settlements in South America were formed by feudal groups from Spain and Portugal; the United States and what Hartz calls Dutch South Africa were settled by bourgeois groups during the European Enlightenment; the establishment of settlements in" British South Africa " coincided with the rise of the labor movement in Europe and therefore took on a "radical" character. According to Hartz's terminology, feudalism, enlightenment, etc.-

11. Taylor Ch. Philosophical Papers. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Ch. 2.

12. Bourdieu P. Prakticheskiy smysl [Practical meaning] / Translated from French / General edition of the translation and afterword by N. A. Shmatko. St. Petersburg: Aleteya; Moscow: Institute of Experimental Sociology, 2001.

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Alienation and radicalism are all "fragments" of the societal self-understanding of Europe.

So far, it can be argued that we have not seen anything but a slightly nuanced version of the history of European expansion. However, Hartz insists that the emerging societies were "new" in the sense of special self-determination, which is quite different from the self-understanding of European societies; "new societies" faced a "fundamental problem of self-determination"13, since being a "fragment", that is, a part without a whole, is quite a difficult test. Despite the fact that their cultural resources were European, these resources had to be adapted and developed to become a whole that never existed in Europe. Members of new societies relied on inherited resources, but were forced to constantly transform them, because these resources were not perfect. It is for this reason that the new societies, to paraphrase Charles Taylor, are societies that interpret themselves; and in each case their self-determination was found to be different from any societal self-understanding found in Europe.

Modernity of "new societies"

According to popular opinion, to be modern is to be involved in the interpretation of oneself; if one agrees with this judgment, then new societies are modern because of the circumstances themselves. However, the specifics of the modernity of new societies should be studied in a little more detail.

Modernity, as we have already written 14, is a commitment to the idea of self-management of one's own life and establishing the laws of co-existence. This idea, in turn, requires self-interpretation and self-questioning. The devotion to this idea was most clearly expressed during the European Enlightenment, although, of course, this period in the history of mankind should not be considered either the most important or the most important period in the history of mankind.-

13. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964. P. 11.

14. Wagner P. Modernity as Experience and Interpretation. Cambridge: Polity, 2008; Wagner P. Modernity: Understanding the Present. Cambridge: Polity, 2012.

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neither was it the earliest, nor the only time, when such self-understanding came to the fore. It is noteworthy that Hartz combines both propositions and, thus, makes it possible to see the special self-understandings of new societies as a kind of modernity. At one point in his work, Hartz clearly articulates this idea: he asserts that "fragments of the Enlightenment", that is, the United States, British Canada, Dutch South Africa, are "embodiments of modernity as such"15. Here, Hartz draws on the standard understanding of modernity as a phenomenon emerging in eighteenth-century Europe along with the spread of an enlightened style of thinking that emphasizes personal freedom and popular self-government. However, contrary to the established ideas, Hartz believes that European thinking has always existed in the mode of contrasting this style of thinking with both the previous feudalism and the subsequent socialist tradition that radicalized the Enlightenment. Thus, Europe has never embodied "modernity as such"; European modernity has always existed in intellectual and political contexts in which the key dogmas of modernity have never been left alone. However, this is exactly what the enlightenment fragments managed to do, in which "the whole integrity of culture" encompassing individualism and democracy could "unfold in a way that was impossible to do in Europe" 16.

In this situation, a brief digression on the history of the United States of America is appropriate. Hartz's book on the American liberal political tradition gives us the key to understanding the above concept. According to Hartz, Locke's individualism was a key component of the US self-understanding, as it was imported by bourgeois European settlers who knew Europe's feudal past, but did not think that Europe would radicalize the Enlightenment along with the rise of the European working class.17 In this way, the United States was more modern than Europe; as Hartz18 writes, this feature "immediately caught the eye of any traveler from Europe."

15. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 45.

16. Ibid. P. 40.

17. Hartz L. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955.

18. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 40.

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It turns out that the United States in the New World was able to establish a pure or ultimate modernity, which in no way could have originated in Europe. If you look at the European studies devoted to the United States and written at the beginning of the XX century (after the American economy gained competitiveness in the world market, as well as after the noticeable presence of US military forces in the First World War), you can pay attention to the following: the authors recognize the existence of a modernity that is different from European, although at the same time more problematic from a normative point of view. There is reason to believe that the question of multiple modernities - at least in Europe - is first formulated in these works and precisely in view of the emergence of the "new society" 19.

From this perspective, how exactly should we understand the modernity of new societies that are not imbued with the self-understanding of the Enlightenment or are not fully imbued with it? According to Hartz, feudal and radical fragments do not embody modernity, but they are in a very clear relationship with it: the first fragment is a rejection of the enlightenment spirit, the second is its radicalization. Hartz seems to recognize the urgent need for self-interpretation, so he wonders if the feudal fragment, even if detached from its European roots, will not lead to "Enlightenment based on its own resources".20 However, he gives a negative answer to this question, which brings us back to the discussion about actors and their interpretation of the world: "Migration in both the Canadian and South American cases was mainly military, clerical, and agricultural in nature. Feudalism as such was, so to speak, shrinking... Fragmentary feudalism was not only stripped of the seeds of urban European Enlightenment, but also made more doctrinal by the clerical aristocracy"21. This thesis is indeed true in relation to the first stages of colonization, but as a result, Hartz is held hostage to his concept of fragmentation: he underestimates the possibility of re-establishment.-

19. See Wagner P. The Resistance that Modernity Constantly Provokes. Europe, America and Social Theory // Thesis Eleven. 1999. No. 58. P. 35 - 58.

20. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 27.

21. Ibid.

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by exaggerating the importance of the continuing and determining influence of the original establishment of new societies. According to Hartz, fragments exist as consistent interpretive structures, devoid of resources for self-modification. They predestine social life, making it more conservative than the one that the European social context has been able to overcome.

This thesis is supported by a large body of evidence in The Foundation of New Societies. However, it is impossible not to notice in this work that some facts are ignored, as well as problematic interpretation. Two examples will suffice. First, the declarations of independence and constitutional developments of the early nineteenth century, which eventually led to the founding of the Latin American States in their present form, were fueled by liberal-revolutionary stimuli emanating from France. Hartz cannot help noticing this, but he suddenly abandons his emphasis on self-understanding in favor of analyzing the interests and power of dominant groups, thereby assuming a purely instrumental use of revolutionary ideology. Contrary to Hartz, recent research suggests otherwise. Carlos Forment 22 points out that there has been a tradition of "democracy in Latin America" since the beginning of the 19th century, which differs from the one analyzed in the famous work of Alexis de Tocqueville on the material of North America. However, this difference does not make the Latin American tradition deviant or incomplete. Mota Orea23 recently reconstructed the "watered-down liberalism" that had influenced Latin American constitutional law since the nineteenth century, drawing attention to social and cultural issues that European political thought was well aware of, but which it did not want to explicitly address. Finally, a final example: a recent study by Francisco Ortega 24 on Latin American political actors of the early 19th century shows much greater awareness.-

22. Forment C. Democracy in Latin America 1760 - 1900. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

23. Mota A. Researching Brazilian Modernity (report in the framework of the research project "Trajectories of Modernity"). Barcelona, 2012.

24. Ortega F. "Born of the Same Womb, Different in Origin and Blood". Social Fragmentation and the Making of Latin America 1760-1860 (in progress, 2012).

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more heterogeneous than that of similar societies in North America. Hartz understates the role of explicit constitutional aspects in the founding of new Latin American societies in the early nineteenth century, reinforcing the significance of the original interpretations of the world shared by the first settlers.

Although this may seem like an incorrect dating of the foundation, our second example concerns underestimating the possibility of re-establishment of a society at a late stage. Thus, Hartz25 argues that the" authoritarian tradition of Peron-Vargas labor organization " in Latin America must be understood against the background of Catholic traditionalism and that it arises "at a time when the masses have not yet been significantly affected by liberal influence." This interpretation is quite in line with the thesis of the closing of the fragment and the absence of other cultural resources, such as the Enlightenment or radical elements. However, in our opinion, it would be much more convincing to consider that these examples illustrate the key stages of transformation of Latin American modernity, which developed from the 19th century onwards in parallel with the European organization of modernity and based on some similar interpretative elements, when dealing with the new situation of the organizing working class26. Our analysis shows the weakness of the thesis indicating on the isolation of the fragment and the absence of new issues that require interpretive creative involvement.

Understanding modernity in the face of meeting the Other

If we generalize a little, then both the credibility and flaws of Hartz's position stem from the ambiguity of his view of "fragments" and the contexts of their existence. On the one hand, the idea of "fragment fixity" leads to determinism in thinking, which contradicts its recognition of the importance of experience. On the other hand, the service station-

25. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 32.

26. This thesis is supported by: Larrain J. Identity and Modernity in Latin America. Cambridge: Polity, 2000; Larrain J. Latin American Varieties of Modernity // Varieties of World-making (Eds. Nathalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner). Liverpool: Liverpool University Prress, 2007. P. 41 - 58; Domingues J.M. Latin America and Contemporary Modernity: a Sociological Interpretation. London: Routledge, 2008.

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However, in Hartz's thought, there is an awareness that a fragment cannot exist on its own and that "the energies released from its disintegration"27 set a special imposed dynamic that has no analogues in the "Old World". The context of fragment disintegration is a new settlement situation in the "New World," and the key component of this situation is what Hartz calls a " meeting of the races."

When Hartz speaks of a" meeting of the races "that anticipates the term" meeting " in Talal al-Assad, 28 he is trying to avoid a one-sided view of colonialism as absolute domination. It forms a double comparative agenda: first, differences between European fragments as such; second, variations within the fragments themselves, " stemming from the influence of Latin American, African, and autochthonous culture, non-Western in nature." This two-step process leads, first of all, to reflection on the formation of the concept and its use. Hartz takes into account the possible objection that the" European ideological categories " of feudalism, liberalism, and radicalism can seriously limit comparative analysis. He insists that the value of these categories lies not in their full relevance to the context, but in their ability to "provide a starting point for the analysis to begin." In general, "every situation of a meeting between the West and non-West can be considered as a situation involving the involvement of two fragments"; the" analytical "advantage assigned to the West is perceived by them as too harmless:" If, in pursuit of clearly defined analytical goals, we take the Western norm as a basis, then the distortion of this norm is non-Western a fragment will clearly highlight the degree of compromise that this fragment was forced to make." Although this is a fairly general view, we, being more knowledgeable about postcolonial studies, are much less inclined to believe that such an approach "does not threaten to narrow the prospects for studying American history by excluding the Iroquois or Cherokee view of what is happening." 29
Hartz himself does not analyze how the categories of colonized populations affect the outcome of their "encounter" with Europeans.

27. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 28.

28. Asad T. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. New York: Prometheus, 1995.

29. For all citations, see: Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 28.

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He demonstrates his openness to this possibility: Hartz is ready to take into account the effect of the presence of non-European peoples in the transformation of "European categories" or "Western norm". However, even with all this in mind, his comparative observations concerning colonial modernity seem significant.

Hartz introduces a distinction between fragments based on how Europeans react to the unexpected presence of humans in the territory they inhabit30. He strongly emphasizes the significance of the "unprecedented experience of encountering Indians and Africans", which requires "heroic efforts to extract from European ideologies those contents that will be suitable for building relations between races" 31. The simplest - and, we add, not the most "heroic", despite its mythologization in American films and the military lexicon - "the way to introduce Western ideologies" is destruction. The consequences of such violence will haunt modern settlers for two reasons. First, extermination is never total, so " alienated autochthonous peoples... they create constant problems", living somewhere on the edges of new societies. Secondly, the settlers 'urgent" need for labor" leads to the importation of slaves into the territory where the local population is almost completely destroyed, "while with the slaves it is necessary to build more permanent and, consequently, more complex relations"32. This second observation simply suggests the continued dependence of settlers - and Europeans in general-on non-Europeans; this insight is notably absent from both modernization theory and the concept of multiple modernities.

The nature of these permanent relations differed significantly in the case of feudal culture on the one hand, and liberal and radical culture on the other. In this article, we will use the division into Catholic and Protestant interpretations of these relations. We, modern people, at the same time

30. For a general overview, see: Mbembe A. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

31. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 49.

32. For all citations, see: Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 50.

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We have come to regard our own self-understanding as a priority over all others, including the feudal self-understanding of our own European past, built on the basis of unjustified hierarchies. Historians of slavery especially tend to regard feudal-minded Latin Europeans as inclined to slavery at the very historical moment when enlightened Britons were insisting and increasingly imposing a ban on slavery, thereby opening the way for historical progress. Hartz's comparative sociological approach reveals a slightly different picture: it shows that " in at least one important aspect, building relationships between races was much easier for feudal cultures compared to liberal and radical cultures." The fact is that the former had "a concept of status that works well in this context", while "Enlightenment cultures were devoid of such an analog" 33.

European feudal society was permeated with hierarchy, it clearly distinguished the status groups to which a person belonged from birth. Accordingly, European settlers in Latin America may well have used this conceptual framework to integrate others as new members of society.34 Native Americans, and later African slaves, were granted registration in a social order, having a lower status, but they were still not excluded from the concept of common humanity derived from the beliefs of Catholic Christianity, as Bartolome de Las Casas perfectly illustrates. As a result, "the Latin American fragments, by including both Africans and Indians in their status systems and thereby generating a social system out of their own resources, were saved from the fluctuations of egalitarian morality."35 These fluctuations were due to the Enlightenment's commitment to the"norm of equality" 36, which applies equally to all people. However, this norm was transferred to a completely new context: the context of an unexpected

33. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 50.

34. См.: Elliott J. H. The Discovery of America and the Discovery of Man // Facing Each Other. The World's Perception of Europe and Europe's Perception of the World (Ed. Anthony Pagden) // An Expanding World. Vol.31. Part I. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

35. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 57.

36. Ibid. P. 58.

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meetings with other people. To use Hartz's words again, the culture of Enlightenment "proclaims the universal equality of people, so that any slavery of a person means a denial of his very humanity"37. As a result, both the liberal and radical fragments were deprived of the ability to rank people available for the feudal fragment. These fragments were forced to be either included or excluded. Accordingly, "disputes over racial issues were conducted in the language of ethical extremes, which the norm of universal equality imposed-in consciousness, if not always in reality-on human relations." 38 In practice, this has often led to a temporary successful complete suppression of "egalitarian conclusions from the Enlightenment through the attribution of Negroes to property or to non-human race"; examples include the southern states of the United States and Dutch South Africa, 39. Democracy as equal freedom to participate in collective self-determination is the political value of the Enlightenment. Within the framework of the liberal fragment, this value is best represented by the Orange Free State, as well as the Republic of South Africa (Transvaal), two Afrikaner states formed in South Africa. Both states, according to the standard view of the history of political modernity, introduced equal suffrage for all men much earlier than Europeans. However, this was done by narrowing political equality to the white population in the situation of exploitation of black labor in the household and agriculture. Thus, according to Hartz, we are dealing "with the Greek democracy of the white community, which has become even more egalitarian in view of the prosperity of the group of Negroes under it." 40
Radicalization of modernity from the South

Hartz wrote at a time when the apartheid regime in South Africa was still firmly on its feet, but he fully admitted the possibility of change and, in particular, predicted that a new generation of South Africans of Dutch origin (Afrikaners) "smallpox-

37. Hartz L. The Founding of New Societies. P. 50.

38. Ibid. P. 58.

39. Ibid. P. 60.

40. Ibid. P. 59.

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reith the idea that Afrikaners recognize only one single model of relations between races. " 41 He wrote shortly after the Cuban Revolution, at the height of the decolonization of Africa, which led to the emergence of a number of new independent States. Hartz was sure that the new elites in these fragments would not be able to maintain their own hegemonic position, and their own descendants would be carriers of a completely different understanding of the world, they would have a request for change. If we look at the end of apartheid in South Africa and the "civil society revolt" in Brazil and other Latin American societies through the lens of these predictions, we should recognize the strength of the world-sociological approach developed during the Sharpeville shooting in South Africa, shortly before the rise of military dictatorships in Latin America. Today, the changes that Hartz predicted, even in the most general terms, are materializing in the most obvious way. In support of this thesis, we conclude the article with some observations about the last two decades, during which specific interpretations of modernity in the South, different from their northern counterparts, were further developed. To save space, we will focus on South Africa 42.

South African modernity, which emerged at a time when self-determination was understood as the rule of a minority over a majority, is now much more committed to the ideals of free and equal democracy. It is trying to reorient the socio-political system, getting rid of the exclusion and suppression characteristic of the apartheid era. In the history of European modernity, the emphasis on collective self-understanding was based on a certain idea of the unity of people, often called a nation, which concealed the underlying tension between the multitude of people that make up any community, and the supposedly emerging common will, implied by the concept of popular sovereignty. In South Africa, this tension is clearly evident: a democratic South Africa emerges from a situation of minority domination over the majority, which nevertheless is also dominated by the majority.

41. Ibid. P. 22.

42. The following analysis is based on the work of Wagner P. Violence and Justice in Global Modernity: Reflections on South Africa with World-sociological Intent / / Social Science Information / Information sur les sciences socials. October 2011. Vol.50.

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it is part of the overridable generality 43. This tension is highlighted in the characterization of South Africa by former President Thabo Mbeki. He called South Africa a society of two nations - black and white-or a community of Afrikaans speakers with a long history of repression. In doing so, he identified one of the two predominantly white linguistic communities as a former oppressor.44 The term" rainbow nation", coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a key figure of the transit era, was intended to symbolize the current unity in difference, where different cultural perspectives can peacefully coexist without threatening the basic community, that is, the" nation", which is simply necessary for the formation and maintenance of democratic politics. The rainbow principle was to be combined with the practices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was set up to review past violence and injustice and develop compensation measures. Despite the achievements of the TRC, which are enthusiastically described by Antii Krogh, 45 both the rainbow principle and" reconciliation " still remain only symbols of what has yet to be achieved. This is the first point.

The second point is that the current democratic regime of collective self-determination was achieved, at least in part, as a result of a struggle that was seen as a struggle for national liberation, similar to similar processes in former African colonies. 46 The key actor in the struggle was the alliance formed on the basis of the African National Congress (ANC), which for this very reason It is considered as a key actor of future collective self-determination. After the end of the apartheid regime, the ANC has consistently won an absolute majority in all elections, reaching figures close to two-thirds that would allow for changes to the Constitution. The only exception is-

43. См.: Chipkin I. Do South Africans Exist? Nationalism, Democracy and the Identity of "the People". Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 2007.

44. For evidence of how living experience can differ from political analysis of repression, see Dlamini J. Native Nostalgia. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2009.

45. Krog A. Country of My Skull. Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. New York: Random House Broadway, 1998.

46. For a discussion of the reasons for the end of apartheid, see Lipton M. Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists. Competing Interpretations of South African History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

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The Western Cape Province, as well as some municipalities, including Cape Town, are now governed by the Democratic Alliance (YES), a party that grew out of white opposition to apartheid and sees itself as a civil-liberal opposition to the continued unchecked rule of one party. Thus, South Africa finds itself in a political situation that at least in one respect resembles other African polities after the end of colonization: the actor of national liberation is an organized unit of collective self-determination, which minimizes the role of elections and parliament, bringing the country closer to a one-party regime, 47 which contradicts the experience of European democracies, and also makes the scale of collective actions are fairly predictable. However, unlike other African polities, the dominant party in South Africa is itself an alliance that presupposes pluralism of opinions, as well as public discussions. Moreover, the partial success of the DA makes it possible to have a strong opposition at all times, as well as to develop, at least at the regional level, alternatives to government measures.48 Thus, South African politics is located somewhere in the middle between, on the one hand, republicanism, which makes it possible to pursue an essential course of political action, but which can be criticized as "tyranny of the majority" (Alexis de Tocqueville), and, on the other, liberalism, which relies on the concept of human rights emphasizes While it may be criticized for ignoring today's consequences of past practices of repression and exclusion, as well as for being too quick to adapt to the current global economic ideology, it is also a case in point.

Third point: the aspect described above leads to a special relationship between political equality and social solidarity that exists in South African countries.

47. For a discussion of this issue, see Chabal P. Africa: the Politics of Suffering and Smiling. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009.

48. For a recent analysis of party politics in South Africa, see Butler A. The African National Congress under Jacob Zuma // 2010: Development or Decline? (Eds. John Daniel et al.) // New South African Review. 2010. No. 1. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. P. 164 - 83.

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discussions and practices. As already noted, the viability of democracy depends on an atmosphere of trust in civil society, which is a source of solidarity, that is, on the desire to support those who find themselves in difficult situations, provided that they are equally committed to politics. This desire is based on the belief that the person who helps will also be able to count on help if one day they need it.49 Reducing inequality through organized solidarity may well be not an additional factor, but a key condition for preserving democracy in South Africa. Apartheid was a political regime of exclusion that supported a system of exploitation and fleecing, identified by comparing the salaries of white and black workers; recording the infrastructural insecurity of urban areas and the lack of care for rural areas, which were considered solely as a reservoir of labor. 50 As a result, apartheid in South Africa combined features of minority political dominance with extremely high rates of social inequality. The struggle against apartheid was primarily based on political inclusion as the most obvious and most easily identifiable measure to eliminate the traces of apartheid. However, it was expected that the transition to an inclusive democratic political regime would lead to a rapid improvement in the living conditions of the majority. But there has been no such improvement, at least not on the expected scale, so there is considerable dissatisfaction with the persistence of poverty and inequality, in particular the high rates of inequality among the black population due to the emergence of groups of successful black businessmen and politicians. The commitment to the ideal of political equality is indisputable; there is also a general consensus on the need for redistribution to correct the injustices of the past. However, the prospect of internal redistribution stirs up fears among the formerly privileged-

49. Qffe C. Demokratie und Wohlfahrtsstaat: eine europaische Regimeform unter dem Strefi der europaischen Integration // Internationale Wirtschsaft, nationale Demokratie (Hrsg. Wolfgang Streeck). Frankfurt / M.: Campus, 1998. P. 99-136. For a more detailed discussion of changing forms of solidarity, see: Karagiannis N. Multiple Solidarities / / Varieties of World-making (Eds. Nathalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.

50. For a larger analysis, see: Seeks J., Nicoli N. Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2006.

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the potential reduction of their capabilities, especially those of their future generations. As for the strategy of solving the problem of redistribution through economic growth, which was used quite successfully by the Northern European social democracies in the 1950s and 1960s, today it is hindered by the international situation, which is much less favorable for alternative economic policies.

Our brief discussion of the key issues of current South African society focused on three socio-political issues that are generally characteristic of the entire history of modernity as such, but which are of particular importance for South Africa. First, the idea of collective autonomy requires a community capable of deliberative decisions about its own rules and laws, and this is difficult to achieve if the community itself arises from a situation in which the minority suppressed and excluded the majority. Second, any modern polity requires defining the relationship between individual autonomy and collective autonomy, between the freedom of self-determination concerning one's own life and the freedom to collectively determine the conditions necessary to ensure a good life in all its diversity. As a result of decades of discussions, the West has come to the principle of priority of the first over the second. This turn in the West, I believe, is not without contradictions. However, in the case of South Africa, creating conditions for a good life requires significant collective efforts, which make it difficult to simply accept the "western turn" with its priority of individual self-realization. This is particularly true-and this is the third issue-of poverty, in which almost half of South Africans live, as well as extremely unequal access to public goods, such as health care and primary and higher education, which makes it impossible to consider this society as a community of responsibility.51
In contrast to South African modernity, Western European modernity-if we limit ourselves only to this part of the Global North - has long claimed to be successful not only in solving all these problems, but also in insti-tuting new technologies.-

51. It should be noted that these three issues are equally relevant, mutatis mutandis, to the current situation in Brazil.

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of the conditions that ensure its perpetual stability. The proposed solutions are: first, a democratic nation-State, in which the homogeneity of the nation leads to the emergence of a common collective will for popular sovereignty; second, a liberal constitutional rule-of-law state, which combines a commitment to individual freedom with constitutional guarantees, thus perpetuating liberal achievements and limiting the power of potentially tyrannical minorities; third a welfare state that institutionalizes social solidarity through the redistribution of surpluses generated by the controlled functioning of a market economy.

Today it is already obvious that Western European modernity has failed to offer general solutions, nor to ensure the consistency of its own achievements, whose success stems from reliable conceptual foundations, but we can identify these solutions as historical responses to specific problems that have arisen in the European context. The transience and instability of these decisions can be explained by two considerations: historical and current situation. Historically, all these solutions were already at hand at the moment when European modernity was transformed into the totalitarianism characteristic of the period after the First World War. Some of these solutions were even used in the transformation process - for example, the idea of national unity and the historical role of working-class solidarity. Others, such as the idea of individual rights and constitutional guarantees, proved insufficient to protect the achievements of modernity. Today, once again, we can hardly be sure of the permanence of European modernity. First, the common will in its national expression is being undermined both by trends existing within States and by European integration processes. Secondly, the question of the relationship between individual and collective autonomy is again relevant in a situation where the position of society in the global context begins to need to be defined again. Moreover, the emphasis on individual freedom reaches its conceptual limits in recent discussions about cultural rights, ethics, and environmental aspects of maintaining a lifestyle in which consumption is the main expression of individual self-realization. Third, the " European co-

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The "social model" is beginning to crack at the seams as global competition intensifies, severely limiting the excess that can be redistributed. With the crisis in the North and the readiness of the South to deal seriously with long-ignored issues, we see, firstly, a new variety of modern forms, and, secondly, we find that southern forms may well be more suitable for responding to the challenges of our time.

Translated from English by Dmitry Uzlaner

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