1. Retrieving modernity's past, understanding modernity's present -- 2. Changing views of modernity : from convergence and stability to plurality and transformations -- 3. Successive modernities : crisis, criticism and the idea of progress -- 4. Disentangling the concept of modernity : time, action and problems to be solved -- 5. The link between capitalism and democracy reconsidered -- 6. European and non-European trajectories of modernity compared -- 7. Violence and justice in global modernity : reflections on South Africa with world-sociological intent -- 8. Towards a world sociology of modernity.