(Re)locating Northern Modernity: Lines of Tension of the Network Society Model, Looking at Possible Modernities

The paper starts from the need of giving a more precise time-spaced collocation to the conceiving of modernity. A definition of modernity as the result of an interpretative space - produced by tensions between the ideal of individual autonomy and the objectives of full intelligibility and rationalization of the world - is discussed. The model of the network society is then analyzed as one of the current Western dominant frameworks of that interpretative space. On the one side, it seems to provide the most effective vocabulary for understanding crucial social processes of the modern corporation and, more in general, of the “new spirit of capitalism”; moreover, network organizational model is usually presented as more democratic and open, compared to the traditional modern hierarchical devices. Organising via vertical devices – institutions, political representative systems, etc. – has to leave space to the self-organising, horizontal society via networks. But, on the other side, the paper points out as well the fields of tension and the paradoxical contradictions - mainly concerning a crucial pillar of the Western definition of modernity: the process of individualization - internal to that model. In the third part of the paper, some promising directions of social theory are explored. The possibilities of combining sociology and critique, through the abandoning traditional monological intellectual architecture of the “Northern” or “metropolitan social theory” and producing a more inclusive and open social theory of modernity are discussed, looking for possible alternative frameworks for modernity as interpretative space