Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization by José Maurício Domingues

Author:José Maurício Domingues [Domingues, José Maurício]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Developing & Emerging Countries, Business & Economics, Development
ISBN: 9781136576942
Google: D-nGBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-03T03:44:39+00:00

MULTIPLYING IDENTITIES

The global crisis of the second phase of modernity found Latin America facing a difficult economic crisis of its own and a lot of variation in the modernizing offensives launched by its ruling collectivities. Some tried to deepen former modernizing processes, which entailed greater social differentiation, as in Brazil and Mexico; some were basically conservative, as in Colombia and Venezuela. Others were openly reactionary, with projects that actually looked for a dedifferentiation of the social fabric: the return to an agrarian world, where no working class would exist, was the stated aim of the process, as in Argentina and Chile. Other countries followed a more uncertain and shifting direction. All of them eventually increased social complexity, both endogenous and by aggregation. Far-reaching processes of disembedding related to the progress of capitalism, ending most systems of personal domination, and heightened communication fluxes developed simultaneously to differentiation, partly derived from the development of the economy, with its division of labour, and the multiplication of distinct professional fields and activities related to distinct value spheres.

A change in the social fabric ensued and led to an amazing pluralization of identities, in a region that had never actually overcome the mosaic nature which characterized its colonial period, especially in countries with large indigenous populations, irrespective of and along with creative processes of ‘hybridization’, and even what Néstor García Canclini (1990) has deemed the introduction of a ‘post-modern problematic’ (though not postmodernism proper). In turn, the states of the region started, at least partly, or radically in some cases, to shed the projects of homogenization of the social fabric. This would be a lost battle and society, more softly or through fierce conflicts, or through a combination of both, managed to make its influence felt on the state, which would then regulate its new social dynamics, now accepting and even promoting heterogeneity. This did not imply change in the conflictive nature of modernizing moves: clashes between diverse tendencies and projects marked the unfolding of the new situation as intensely as before (Martín-Barbero, 2001; Tapia, 2002; Domingues, 2008a: 92–122).

The family expresses this clearly, with multiplicity re-emerging in what regards it as a site of solidarity. The tendency towards the formalization of marriage was reversed and mere cohabitation became widespread, with distinct models being followed within the one and the same society, with divorce, multiple parenting and different arrangements for the care of children becoming a common characteristic of family life, which is however ever more nuclear in its basic features. Sexuality has become more plastic and assumed a public countenance—with gay marriage jump-starting in Argentina. The influence of the Church in this regard has sharply decreased, while patriarchy lost much of its grip across the subcontinent, although it is still strong in countries such as Mexico and is far from disappearing. After a first ‘demographic transition’, in which decrease of mortality, fecundity and the size of the family were steep, what many analysts defined as a second one unfolds, lending more suppleness to family patterns and social behaviour.

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