The Keywords of the New Modernisation Between Reassemblages and Hybridisations

Abstract

Can we speak of a new form of modernisation? And what concepts characterise it? Starting from these questions, the research examines, from a comparative perspective, the key words that describe modernisation, from classical theories to the present day. In this paper we will show that: (a) if the ontological perspective changes, the way of interpreting terms and, consequently, the discursive repertoires of modernisation also changes; (b) but if we start from what the authors who have dealt with the topic have in common, it becomes clear that the classical words of modernisation have not been removed, but made ambivalent or reflexively problematised; (c) after the classical and post-classical theories of modernity, authors of the first decade of the 21st century have added words that hybridize what their predecessors had distinguished.