Latin America and Contemporary Modernity

Domingues, José M. ( 2008 ) Latin America and Contemporary Modernity: A Sociological Interpretation , Routledge ( New York and London ), xix + 210 pp. £60.00 hbk . Modernity has had a lot of bad press among contemporary Latin American thinkers. Think of the work of Walter Mignolo, for whom modernity is linked not to science, progress or democracy, but to colonialism. From Mignolo's perspective, modernity is to blame for much of what is wrong with our world. And it is especially to blame for Latin America's problems. But in recent years Latin America has also produced numerous defenders of the idea of modernity. Perhaps no other Latin American scholar has fulfilled this role in as forceful and knowledgeable a manner as the Brazilian sociologist José Maurício Domingues, whose new book offers both a learned analysis of modernity and an eloquent plea for its enduring relevance to our world, Latin America included. For Domingues, the core concept of modernity is what he calls ‘equal freedom’, the idea that relations between individuals should be shorn of all forms of ‘domination, inequality, privilege’ (p. 2). In order to advance the goal of equal freedom, modern civilisation has created a system of rights protecting all members of a given society. The law ‘embodies’ these rights, while the judicial system ‘sustain[s]’ the law (p. 1). The importance of the ideal of equal freedom is also clear from the modern notion of citizenship, according to which all members of a society ‘are taken as equally free, regardless of any specific traits' (p. 12). Unlike Marxist thinkers, Domingues does not regard the ideal of citizenship as a ruse designed to cover up unequal power relations. Rather, it expresses the ideal of equal freedom that stands at the core of modern civilisation. For Domingues, the story of modern civilisation is in large part the story of the advance of democracy. But not entirely. According to Domingues, modernity begins in the nineteenth century in what he calls a ‘restricted liberal’ form (p. 3). In this phase, the market becomes the ‘organising principle of social life’ and the individual is placed in the role of ‘(free) agent solely responsible for his life’ (p. 42). At the same time, the author sees a persistence of ‘the mentality associated with personal forms of domination’ (p. 42), particularly in Latin America. With liberal capitalism entering into a crisis in the 1920s, the second phase of modernity begins. Domingues calls this phase ‘state-organised modernity’ (p. 43), involving greater state intervention in the economy. It adopts the form of Keynesianism in Western Europe and the United States and of the ‘developmental state’ in Latin America. State-organised modernity sets the stage for the ‘thirty glorious years' (p. 43) beginning with the end of the Second World War, but it comes to an end in the 1970s, opening the way for the third phase of modernity. This phase proves to be a complex, contradictory phenomenon: it is characterised on the one hand by the ‘flourishing ... of democracy’ (p. 75) and ‘greater social pluralism’ (p. 121), and on the other hand by the implementation of free-market policies. Domingues applauds the former developments and laments the latter. He regards the spread of democratic institutions and practices as well as the increase in social heterogeneity as part of the utopian project of modernity. But he offers a harsh assessment of the neoliberal economic policies instituted throughout Latin America starting in the 1980s. They have resulted, he argues, in ‘harsh social conditions, relative stagnation, and backwardness' (p. 39). It is as if Latin America had become more modern in some respects but less democratic in others. Domingues may well be right about this. What is disappointing, however, is that he does not make much of an effort to explain the relationship between these two faces of modernity. But perhaps that is a topic for another book. One of the most intriguing features of Domingues's book is its approach to the question of Latin America's relationship to modernity. Contrary to those who regard modernity as an alien imposition on Latin America, Domingues contends that ‘the modern imaginary is as much Latin American and peripheral as it is Western and rooted in the center’ (p. xvi). Towards the end of the book, the author goes even further, claiming that ‘in terms of emancipatory movements, [Latin America] is on a par with other regions' (p. 131). Given the ‘creative forms' the imaginary of modernity has adopted in Latin America, Domingues argues that the continent is, in fact, ‘at the forefront of modern civilisation’ (p. 131). It is difficult to say whether this is true or not. But what is indisputable is that with his latest book José Maurício Domingues has placed himself at the forefront of the international debate on modernity. Maarten van Delden 1

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