Modernity in common parlance is associated with particular technologies, such as the internet or smartphones. However, rather than thinking of modernity as being a state brought by the invention of particular devices, I find it more analytically useful to consider modernity as modes of thought and as systems of discursive practice.

Whereas in a non-modern culture, ways of life and motivations for action are linked to and legitimized by connection to tradition, these practices and ways of thinking are instead governed by rationality and reason in modernity. Modernity is thus characterized as being the displacement of customs in favor of logical calculation.

The eponymous grocer in Lerner’s piece thus embodies modernity, rejecting traditional and scoffing the face of traditional hierarchies of power in the village. The grocer’s mindset and ways of engaging with tradition elucidate the notion that modernity is much more a state of mind than piece of technology.