Harry Harootunian. History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Extract

Can the concept of “everydayness” help us widen “our understanding of the processes of modernity” (p. 4)? Yes, asserts Harry Harootunian in History's Disquiet, arguing that everydayness allows for seeing assimilations (not copies or alternatives) of modernity as experienced in regions outside Euro-America. Exploring early twentieth-century Japanese notions of modernity in tandem with a much larger roster of European theorists, Harootunian suggests that as both temporal experience and historical category, everyday life allows for a leveling of the analytical playing field across diverse societies such that a “native theory” (6) is not needed to explicate modernity in places such as Japan. Instead, as shared experiences of capitalism that transcend cultural geographies, everydayness allows for a coevalness of capitalist societies in and out of Europe.