Tertius gaudens or pro bono publico?
Commentary on SN Eisenstadt’s ‘Modernity and modernization’ and a response to Volker H Schmidt
- Author
- Edward A Tiryakian Duke University
- DOI
- 10.1177/205684601110
Introduction
This commentary ties in with the central theme of ‘Modernity and modernization’ discussed by Eisenstadt and Schmidt by being both pro bono and tertius gaudens. I share with them an overlapping general theoretical orientation in macrosociology and comparative analysis (the pro bonopart) but see myself as a third party interlocutor in the seeming intellectual dispute between Schmidt and Eisenstadt. My reading is that they are not that far apart, at least initially, for both seem to accept the reality of modernization, as a continuing process of social and cultural change.