The new faces of Obscurantism in Western societies: an introduction

Although the West has often seen itself as the spearhead of modernity and universal values through the vast Enlightenment movement, many of its peoples (in Europe and North America) now seem to be turning their backs on the idea of progress and appear to consider it as an outdated 20th century notion. Indeed, this exhausted notion now seems to evoke a time when social and technological progress was associated with intellectual and even psychological fulfilment on the one hand, equal opportunities for upward social mobility and the integration of the working classes and ethnic minorities on the other, and advances in civil rights, democracy and full citizenship on the third.