What's modern about the modern world‐system? Introducing ordinary modernity through world hegemony

Abstract

Interpreting modernity as constituting practices to cope with the perpetual change deriving from the capitalist imperative to ceaseless accumulation, it is argued that world hegemonic states create exceptional periods of change which stimulate major constructions of modernity. The nature of these modernities is explored through the creative arts where the hegemon's civil society has been a cultural as well as an economic leader. A celebration of ordinariness is found which is related to social practices to create ordinary modernity. The core concept of this form of modernity is comfort, and the hegemonic contribution to creating home comforts culminating in twentieth‐century suburbia is charted. The latter is implicated in an Americanization of the world that leads to an unsustainable world system. The irony of the article, therefore, is that it sees ordinary modernity leading to an extraordinary world impasse.