Modernity is a contested power project, not a natural state of progress.

Evidence

Asad is clear that the important point is to ask what the secular/religious, modernity/pre-modernity distinction secures. … Modernity is a project – or rather, a series of interlinked projects – that certain people in power seek to achieve. The project aims at institutionalizing a number of (sometimes conflicting, often evolving) principles: constitutionalism, moral autonomy, democracy, human rights, civil equality, industry, consumerism, freedom of the market – and secularism. It employs proliferating technologies (of production, warfare, travel, entertainment, medicine) that generate new experiences of space and time, of cruelty and health, of consumption and knowledge. The notion that these experiences constitute ‘disenchantment’ – implying a direct access to reality, a stripping away of myth, magic, and the sacred – is a salient feature of the modern epoch. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 374

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames modernity as an explicit project pursued by people in power, with a definitional list of its institutionalized principles.
• XREF: connects to: Social progress has hidden, not ended, the modern discourses causing domination. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 671