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Modernity typically refers to "a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period," marked in...

Modernity typically refers to "a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period," marked in particular by the rise of industrialism, capitalism, secularization, the nation-state, and its constituent forms of surveillance (Barker 2005, 444). The term is related to the modern era and modernism but forms a distinct concept. In different contexts, the term may refer to a condition associated with cultural and intellectual movements of a period beginning anywhere from 1436 to 1789 (or for a few as late as 1895), and extending to the 1970s or later (Toulmin 1992, 3-5). While the term "modern" can be traced back to the fifth century, when it was used to distinguish the Christian era from the pagan age, the word did not gain widespread currency until the seventeenth-century French “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” on whether modern culture is superior to classical culture. Already with its earliest use, however, modernity was associated with the renunciation of the recent past, in favor of new beginnings and a reinterpretation of historical origins. The distinction between "modernity" and "modern" did not arise until the nineteenth century, however (Delanty 2007). Some schools