Recognising European Modernities

Book excerpt: For over a century, Europe has been characterised by a plurality of capitalist modernities. At any moment, each country possesses its own distinctly modern qualities which are partly shaped through interrelationships with other countries. Each European commodity society has experienced successive, but different overlapping, periods of industrial modernity (large scale factories and urban growth), high modernity (social modernization promoted by social engineering) and hypermodernity (the acceleration of modernity, yielding new circumstances and sensibilities). Interrogating contemporary hypermodern Europe thus requires an exploration of industrial and high modern Europe. Recognising European Modernities explores a century of civilisation through a critical examination of the extreme case of Sweden. Using montage - relayering multiple pasts and on-going present - the book challenges the contemporary obsession with postmodernity, demanding a deeper, more connective understanding of the pleasures and dangers of the European present. The author visits three spectacular spaces: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Globe, a contemporary multi-purpose arena. Analysis of these pivotal spaces reveals the on-going process of modernization as new forms of consumption are repeatedly entangled in changing discourses of power to be reworked and translated into cultural politics.