This book introduces the concept of global modernity as a paradigm for the analysis of the contemporary era. Building on Parson's distinction between social, cultural, personal and organismic systems, it presents a four-dimensional scheme that aims to identify modernity's key structural components.

Volker H. Schmidt is Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He was formerly a Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University, USA, and he has held several fellowships at the University of Münster, Germany. Most recently, he was a Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld, Germany.