What is Politically-Economic Modern? World Sub-orders in a Social Science Educator’s Take on History Pedagogy

Abstract

At the dawn of the 21^st century—when your author, who is now an educator, was in college—the United States was the sole global superpower. But the world changed with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as other events that remade the world in which current students now study. As an educator, I can explain that the structure of the world, termed “world orders,” can subsist of underlying world “sub-orders,” and “sub-order traits” which even underlie them historically, and how students can outline them. In this way, while political-economic history looks to be constantly repeating itself, with the alignment of “traits” changing, what is considered “modern” and how we go about teaching it in history, political, and economic courses is the research aim of this article. Unlike the historian, whose job it is to identify such “traits,” the social scientist should attempt to measure their importance; as educators, we need to point this difference out to students. These new ideas come from an educator with a background in both history and the social sciences. The article summarizes the current world order and concludes with a discussion of what “future” world orders might be, based on sub-orders, while offering ideas for educators to use for students, many of whom will be future scholars, on how to measure which world orders and “sub-orders” are generationally and empirically “modern.”