ABSTRACT

In this paper, we aim to forge potentially generalizable insights into “Eastern” urbanity and its confrontation with modernity. We radically historicize analytical categories such as modernity and take them as vernacular categories of practice utilized by actors in a given space and time. Grounding our theorizing in findings from a larger research project on modern self-perceptions in an industrial city (Łódź in today’s central Poland), we describe generic features marking modern self-perception in the Global East: self-perceived asynchronicity, translocal and moving benchmarks, rapidly shifting geopolitical frameworks, and a specific legacy of history. All these elements, which shape local attempts to be modern according to actors’ own changing and contested imaginations, constitute what we call asynchronous modernity.

摘要

在本文中，我们旨在对“东方”城市及其与现代的对峙形成潜在的普遍化见解。我们从根本上对分析性类别（例如现代性）进行了历史性的分类，并将其作为行为者在给定的时空范围内使用的白话实践类别。基于我们在一个工业城市（今天的波兰中部Łódź）的一项较大的现代自我感知研究项目中得出的结论的理论基础，我们描述了标志着全球东部现代自我感知的一般特征：自我感知的异步性，跨地域性和移动性基准，迅速变化的地缘政治框架以及特定的历史遗产。所有这些要素，根据演员自身不断变化和充满争议的想象力，塑造了当地人试图成为现代人的尝试，构成了我们所谓的异步现代性。