Disorder as the result of the fragmentation process

Response paper to Religion and Identity

Order and Disorder in Global System

Name   : Anwar Masduki Azzam

Class    : CRCS 2012

At the first time, this article has attracted me strongly with its prelude that our era is “an era of disorder” (p. 233). It automatically brings me into the perspective that there is different view between now and past, today and yesterday. I would like to say that this article tends to differ and compare the reality. After reading into the conclusion, I see that this article truly emphasizes the disorder as a result of the process of fragmentation (p. 252).

The conclusion above actually can answer my first question about what disorder we have already had recently, and why this disorder seems different from the past. However, using the second question as the main point, I think that this article has not given me a comprehensive understanding about the reality we have today. I would argue that the process of disorder is not only the example of fragmentation today. Fragmentation has also occurred in the past which is actually not quite different. 

For instance, I really agree that modernity produces the new identity of people to be more plural and complex. However, I think the concept of modernity in this article tends to simplify the word of modernity only as a result of modernization in Europe, as clearly this article says it as the effort of centralization. If the meaning of modernization is only monopolized by the history of western people which particularly refers to the history renaissance and aufklarung, the industrial revolution and democratic state, we can see that there is a problem of understanding the meaning of modernization itself.

Finally, I think the modernization process is not only a particular phenomenon in our reality. As a human being, we have experienced modernity along with our daily life. Modernization is our history itself, not a monopolistic idea from western people history. If we can understand this, so we cannot say that the fragmentation is merely starting when there is an effort to centralize people to “western” things. And so does the disorder process, we can understand that the disorder process also occurs in the past.