This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Smith, C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

The Sequestration of Experience: Rights Talk and Moral Thinking in `Late Modernity'

Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Manchester carole.smith{at}man.ac.uk

Giddens argues that modernity is characterized by the separation of time and space, by disembedding mechanisms and by institutional reflexivity. These characteristics combine with a dynamic pace and scope of change and contribute to modernity's emphasis on institutional control. Internally referential systems exclude those moral and existential issues that threaten `ontological security'. Bauman similarly emphasizes modernity's passion for order and `progress', the fragmentation of social roles and personal identity and rapid technological change. In both these scenarios modernity must necessarily be morally arid. In late modernity Giddens suggests that radical doubt and the threat of meaninglessness encourage the `return of the repressed' and Bauman cautiously indicates that humankind may be willing to struggle with issues of moral responsibility. I would argue that Bauman and Giddens are mistaken in viewing late modernity as a time of moral renewal. Rather, rights talk has come to colonize moral thinking. Giddens and Bauman fail to give sufficient attention to the invocation of rights in the governance of human affairs and, therefore, fail to recognize the way in which rights talk constitutes the sequestration of morality in late modernity.

Key Words: late modernity • law • modernity • morality • rights

Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 1, 43-66 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038502036001003


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				G. Hanlon, T. Strangleman, J. Goode, D. Luff, A. O'Cathain, and D. Greatbatch Knowledge, technology and nursing: The case of NHS Direct Human Relations, February 1, 2005; 58(2): 147 - 171. [Abstract] [PDF]