Epochalism
Epochalism is an attitude of respect for the progressive spirit of the age and for social and technological advancement, which was contrasted by Clifford Geertz with what he termed the (essentialist) valorisation of traditional values. He viewed this distinction as a central social polarity pervading developing nations.Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (1973) p. 240-1
More broadly, the term used has been used to describe the post-Fordist, postmodern 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.E. Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013) p. 44 J. Urry, Climate Change and Society (2011) p. 36
Polarities in emerging economies
Epochalism in the developing world can be seen purely as a progressive force, favouring movement toward secularisation and industrial advance, as opposed to a regressive return to the traditional values of community and Gemeinschaft.B. K. Khlief, Language, Ethnicity and Education in Wales (1980) p. 6 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/Western control.Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993) p. 263 and p. 371
Internet epochalism
The rapid rise of the World Wide Web led many digerati to see it as an unprecedented human phenomenon, wholly divorced from all past experience.A. Briggs/P. Burke, A Social History of the Media (2002) p. 312 Evgeny Morozov 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{{'"}}.E. Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013) p. 36 Previous technological advances, as with the age of railways or the age of broadcasting,A. Briggs/P. Burke, A Social History of the Media (2002) p. 263 had of course made very similar claims for themselves; and A. E. Housman 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".A. E. Housman, Collected Poems and Selected Prose (1988) p. 312
Late modernity however, with its shortening of awareness of time-spans and its focus on the present,I. Craib, The Importance of Disappointment (1994) p. 197 makes the short-sightedness of epochalism - with what Morozov saw as its dark fetishism of Internet-based solutionsE. Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013) p. 36 - an increasingly plausible intellectual posture.
See also
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- Cyber-utopianism
- Cyborg anthropology
- Epoch
- Social innovation
- Strategic essentialism
- Three-age system
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References
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External links
- [http://cus.sagepub.com/content/3/2/217.abstract "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